Eats, Shoots & Leaves
by WastelandRose
Summary: Charlie blinked hard, kneading her temples and trying to figure out whether or not she was hallucinating again and, if so, why in the hell her hallucinations all centered on the damn panda...
1. Victory, Sort of

1 - Victory... Sort of...

Right from the beginning, Charlie had a bad feeling about the panda.

The young woman normally wouldn't have even bothered trying to win the creepy thing, but Nicholas had already sunk ten bucks at the carnival's ping pong toss by the time she found him there. She might've been able to let that go, to chalk it up to the kid's being almost unbearably gullible and in need of the life lesson, but the carnie in charge of the booth was teasing her little brother, taunting the boy about his poor aim and the defeated tears threatening to fall from his big doe eyes. And, well, there was no way that Charlie was going to allow that to continue unchecked.

So she paid another buck for a few more balls and, stance perfect, family honor at stake, drew on her expert beer pong skills (freshman year at State had been productive) and proceeded to land ping pong ball after ping pong ball in the game's floating glass dishes. The carnie (bald and pierced, tattooed all over with odd, curling sigils) sulked angrily while Nicholas (smile bright) did several loud victory laps of the crumbling booth. Charlie was pleased to see her little brother so thrilled and the carnie so pissed. She didn't think too much about hearing the man muttering under his breath in a strange language while he handed her a giant stuffed panda bear. She didn't even think anything about the little jolt she felt when she touched the toy. Static electricity and all. Maybe lightning over the horizon.

Many hours later, after nearly fifteen minutes of wrestling the oversized creature into the backseat of her Firebird, Charlie made sure Nicholas was buckled safely beside the stuffed beast and set off for home. The night was late by then, highways dark and empty. Nicholas didn't last long before snuggling his shaggy head against his furred friend and drifting off to sleep. That was ok. The kid must've been exhausted, having run around for most of the day carrying that _freaking_ bear. But her brother's snoozing left Charlie and the panda all alone together, locked in an awkward staring contest in the rearview.

The thing was just so absurd, its stitched-on grin wide and happy for no reason at all, its pudgy limbs useless around the bulging bulk of its padded belly. The panda's presence bothered Charlie. She couldn't quite shake the uncomfortable sensations brought on by its unblinking black button eyes, shook herself out of the sudden urge to close her own eyes and sleep...

She gave herself a few firm slaps in the face to keep awake and blasted the A/C and the AC/DC. It had been a long day for the eighteen-year-old, too, having to chase Nicholas around the carnival. And falling asleep at the wheel would've definitely been bad. She couldn't afford to make any repairs on her baby right then.

Once they arrived home, Charlie shuffled Nicholas out of the backseat, thankful that their nearest neighbor was over a mile away when the kid started whining about that damn panda. Charlie had to pull the thing out of her car and carry it inside the small, isolated one-story house she'd grown up in. She tucked in her brother and his freaky toy, then, exhausted, collapsed fully dressed into her own bed and was out for the count.

Dreaming of nothing at all and still whimpering in the grip of nightmare.

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I've been debating for a long time whether or not to publish this. It's around 10 chapters but could end up longer since I only antipated it to be 1-2 to begin with. W/e. I've enjoyed it and think it's quite entertaining. Review, please ;) (that way I'll know who actually cares to see it continued (even though it's already mostly written so it doesn't really matter (except perhaps for how fast I post the rest... (MWAHAHAHAHAH)))))... ;D


	2. Salt Mines and Fine Rides

2 - Salt Mines and Fine Rides

In the morning, Charlie woke to a sudden burst of oldies from her clock radio and yawned, eyes still shut. The young woman stretched and smashed the blaring alarm.

Her day promised to be another long one--dropping Nicholas off at day camp, waiting the lunch shift at the diner, going to the dentist, swinging by the grocery store, picking up Nicholas. Possibly handling other unforeseen errands and incidents and complications at various times between.

Charlie didn't want to get out of bed. Even after a solid eight hours of sleep, she still felt disturbingly exhausted. Drained.

But sleeping in wasn't an option. Things needed doing; Nicholas needed delivering. Charlie forced herself up.

Seconds later, her foot caught on a fluffed lump, and the young woman went _down_, sprawling helplessly across the floor of her bedroom.

"_Fuck_," Charlie snarled, kicking at whatever had tripped her. And then she opened her eyes. It was the panda, the giant, smiling panda. Body mashed out of place from Charlie's trip and kick, the panda was right there on the floor beside her bed. Its shining eyes mocking and smug.

"Lose something?" Charlie asked, dragging the toy into the kitchen and leaving it off next to Nicholas's chair. She got to work tying back her long red hair, starting the coffee machine because no way in hell was she functioning today without a healthy dose of caffeine in her bloodstream.

Nicholas stared up at her, all cute and dopey with his big eyes, pink-tinged milk dribbling down his chin and back into his bowl of Lucky Charms. "Why'd you take him?" the boy questioned, seeming kind of hurt.

"I didn't take anything," Charlie replied, annoyed, "_It _was next to my bed this morning. I almost broke my neck tripping over the freaky thing. What were you doing in my room? Did you get scared?" Kid still got scared at night every once in awhile. He was seven and still slept with a nightlight and was just... sensitive. Dreamy and sweet. With their parents gone for a month--an anniversary cruise through Mexico--he'd been going to Charlie more and more often for comfort.

But Nicholas shook his head. His dark hair looked a few shades lighter from all the sun he'd gotten the day before, his nose raw and freckled. The boy shoveled and chomped another three mouthfuls of cereal before delightedly teasing, "Maybe he walked over on his own. Maybe he likes you."

Charlie snorted, snagging some leftover spaghetti from the fridge. "Fat chance," the young woman grumbled, "Pudgy bastard's feet don't even touch the floor. He'd hafta roll himself."

Nicholas snickered and stuck out his marshmallow-stained tongue.

The morning progressed without any further mention of the fluffy beast. Charlie got Nicholas dressed and dropped him off at his nature camp before heading over to the sight of her summer employment.

The local diner was so... familiar. After having grown up in the little town, having worked at the diner all through high school, then moved away, then come back after her first year of college, it was odd for Charlie to serve so many people she'd grown up with and around. Kids who'd graduated in her year who'd pretty much done nothing for since, former teachers who'd always told her she wouldn't amount to much, old men and women who'd been pinching her cheeks since she was a baby.

On average, they did get their fair share of fresh faces during each shift, roadtrippers just passing through. That day's sprinkling wasn't anything to get excited about: three salesmen and a pair of honest-to-goodness nuns, none of whom tipped very well.

But then there were the brothers. They came in towards the end of the lunch rush, pulled up in this sleek black Impala that made Charlie stop and stare long enough to get the manager bitching at her. Norma'd been bitching nonstop anyways, riding Charlie's ass to get her to move faster even though Charlie was doing her best just to combat lingering exhaustion. Gallons of caffeine had done little to help.

A few minutes later, the men who piled out of the sweet ride sat in Charlie's section. The blonde one shot her a big smile and motioned right away for coffee. The taller one, the shaggy brunette with the massive hands, scowled into a beat up journal.

"Hey, fellas," Charlie greeted, pouring two cups of piping hot jet fuel and offering her most 'let's talk about your car, pretty please' grin, "How's it going?"

"Awesome," the blonde one chirped, fidgeting with excitement, for some reason wearing a leather jacket even though it had to be at least a hundred degrees outside, "We just hit that carnival a few towns over. Fun times." He turned to flash a needling grin at the brunette. "Won Sammy here a panda at the ping pong toss. He's always been a sucker for stuffies."

Hands on aproned hips, Charlie laughed, countering, "No kidding? I won one of those creepy monstrosities last night, for my little brother. The carnie was milking the poor kid dry and laughing about it. But I showed that guy. Almost made blowing off midterm studying for beer pong tourneys totally worth it."

The blonde beamed, eyes bright and happy. "College girl, huh?" he asked, "Where do you go?"

God, the guy was so damn charming. It was impossible not to blush and Charlie didn't think he was even trying to hit on her. Not yet, anyways. "State," she replied, "Finished my first year not too long ago, and I'm heading back in the fall. I'm only waiting tables over the summer to keep my baby in fuel and parts." She nodded out the wide window to where her red Firebird sat gleaming in the sun.

The blonde gave a low, impressed whistle. "Ya, noticed her on the way in," he observed, goddamn rightly, "Gorgeous. Seventy, right?"

"Right on," Charlie said, equally impressed, nervously chewing on her lip as she nodded towards the blonde's ride, "Saw you roll up. Sixty-seven Impala?"

The blonde licked his own lips, finally getting to leering (though Charlie didn't mind; she was well-aware of just how leer-worthy she was). "I'll give you a ride some time," he offered, voice a syrupy purr, "Since you seem like you'd be able to appreciate her-" he paused to give her nametag a thorough read. "Charlie."

Charlie smiled, loving the way he said her name and finding herself slightly unable to break eye contact. He had the _prettiest_ green eyes...

"_Ahem_," the brunette coughed, loudly, drawing Charlie out of her stupor.

Blushing again, the girl cleared her own throat, handing out sticky plastic menus before getting back on track. "Well, um, the specials today are meatloaf, rosemary chicken, and roast beef. We also make our own desserts daily. Today it's strawberry-rhubarb pie, served hot with ice cream."

The blonde man made a somewhat orgasmic (more than somewhat mesmerizing) noise deep in his throat, turning to the brunette and moaning, "Sammy, they got _pie_."

"I heard," the brunette--Sammy, apparently--observed, openly sarcastic.

Charlie smiled politely at the pair, sensing some tension. "I'll just let you fellas look at the menu," she told them pleasantly, sneaking another glance at the blonde and then his car, "Check back in a few minutes."

The young woman watched them from the corner of her vision while she freshened drinks and brought out orders to other tables. Sammy and his companion--damn, she hadn't even gotten his name--looked like they were arguing. Sammy kept getting more and more pissed off while the blonde remained bright and upbeat.

So it remained for the entirety of their meal. By the end of it, Dean--the blonde's name was Dean--had Charlie charmed already halfway out of her panties (and that wasn't easy; Charlie was just as picky about her men as she was about her cars).

Well, Charlie left Dean with her number scribbled on the check, holding it and his slice of cherry pie out of reach until he promised he'd call, if only to give her that ride he promised. Dean seemed as amused as Sam did pissy about the strategy.

All seemed to be going well. Despite Charlie's persistent fatigue, the day was shaping up to be a good one. Until, while Dean and his brother were leaving, while Charlie was nodding them goodbye and carrying a tray of food to another table, she tripped.

It happened in a split second. She caught a flash of movement by her ankles, some black-and-white blur that she absurdly thought could be a cat or a Dalmatian, and then she was quite abruptly hurtling face-first into the linoleum.

Her cheekbone took the brunt of the hit, the young woman unable to get her hands under herself quick enough. Then the world went kind of... black-and-white for awhile. Just white hot pain and black oblivion blotting out her vision and making her head seem like it was getting ready to pop like a particularly juicy pimple.

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Oh nos.

Reviews would be awesome :)


	3. Hapless Victimhood

3 - The Lamentable State of Hapless Victimhood

The world faded back in some moments later. Charlie was flat on her back, her face throbbing, and she was drenched head-to-toe in meatloaf, rosemary chicken, and roast beef.

Her manager was standing over her, as were Dean and Sam.

"Ugh," Charlie moaned.

Someone had already called the paramedics, two guys who graduated a year ahead of her, who used to be--by all means could still have been; it's not like Charlie was up on that kind of gossip--the biggest pair of stoners in the county. Reluctantly, Charlie let them check out her horribly bruised and painful right cheekbone. But that was it. No way in hell was she going to the hospital. She freaking _hated_ hospitals; it always took weeks just to get the smell out of her nose, and she sort of had this thing about needles...

"No, Norma," Charlie told her manager yet again, trying her best to stumble out into the parking lot, "I really feel fine. Just a headache. Randy and Tim said nothing was broken. And I have to go pick up Nicholas. He gets out in half an hour." She walked away as fast as she could before the woman could say anything more, send anyone after her. Though Charlie was fairly sure her mom would hear plenty about it later: Mom and Norma took Pilates together at the Y. Small towns, right?

Charlie was dizzy but slid behind the wheel ok, wearing a fresh set of clothes that she'd thankfully had in her locker: an old concert tee and a pair of tremendously baggy sweats. Charlie drove ok, too, but wanted nothing more than to get Nicholas and go home. Shower, maybe. Crawl into bed with an ice pack and a six pack. So much for the dentist and the grocery store. Charlie just hoped she had enough cash to order pizza because she definitely wasn't cooking. Fuck that. Besides, she hadn't seen Dave Hopper (Delivery Dave, as he was fondly known) in forever. And he'd probably get a kick out of hearing about her spectacular face-plant. Maybe he could even be sweet-talked into bringing over something harder than beer.

Once during the ride, Charlie almost went off the road, glancing in the rearview and suddenly seeing a flash of... God, it was stupid, but she thought she saw the creepy, evil eyes of the stupid stuffed panda. Then she might've... blacked out. But it must've only been for a second. Then she slammed on the brakes and whirled around, and the backseat was as empty as it was supposed to be. No damn panda.

"Hallucination," Charlie sighed, trying her best to get a goddamn grip, "J-Just a hallucination." Maybe she'd have to go to the hospital after all. She was just so freaking _tired_.

Instead she got Nicholas without anymore incident, though the boy was very concerned when he saw the bruise blooming on her face. "Don't worry, Nicky," Charlie teased weakly, "It looks worse than it is. I just need to lie down once we get home."

"I could drive," he suggested eagerly. He was a silver-lining kind of kid.

Charlie threw her head back and laughed, regretting the action as she struggled to get her eyes on the road again and replied, "Not a chance, short stuff. Nobody touches my baby but me."

Really, Nicholas was a sweetie. Once they got home, he hovered by Charlie's side, holding her hand as she wobbled off to bed. He even brought her the Tylenol. Beer would've been preferred but whatever. As long as it was something to take the edge off enough for sleep to be possible.

And sleep she did, dead to the world for almost four whole hours.

When Charlie woke up, the panda was draped across her chest, staring at her with those wide black evil eyes. Damn creature was big enough to almost entirely engulf her, its pudgy limbs straddling the young woman's chest.

The only reason she didn't scream was because her head was already pounding, her body heavy and clumsy. Breathless. Instead she settled for scrambling backwards toward her headboard, shoving and kicking at the panda to get it the hell off herself.

"Nicky," Charlie croaked. She received no answer. Panted and gasped for breath. "Nicholas?"

Still nothing.

Reluctantly, she crawled out of bed, feeling like absolute crap and planning on giving the panda a good kick on her way to finding her brother and asking why the hell he insisted on leaving the stupid toy in her room.

But the spooky plushie was nowhere in sight.

Charlie blinked hard, kneading her temples and trying to figure out whether or not she was hallucinating again and, if so, why in the hell her hallucinations all centered on the damn panda.

"Nicholas?"

Still no answer. The clock said it was around dinner. Time for that pizza.

"Nicholas!"

If the kid had screwed off to some friend's house without permission, Charlie was going to kill him. He damn well knew better.

The hallway smelled like smoke, like burnt polyester.

"NICHOLAS!"

Charlie stumbled into his room, flipped on the light and froze. The place was a wreck, window broken, sheets and pillows ripped to shreds. And there was blood on the carpet. Not a lot, but not exactly a paper cut.

"NICHOLAS!! NICHOLAS!! ANSWER ME, NICHOLAS!!"

She was freaking. Where was her damn brother?! Had some... some psychopath gotten in while she was asleep?! While she was fucking passed out because she'd fallen on her stupid, useless head?! God, Nicky...

"Charlie?" she heard, moments before the kid poked his head around the corner from the living room. He smiled sheepishly and didn't look injured, sick, molested, or generally brutalized.

"Nicky," she sighed, closing the distance much slower than she wanted to and fussing over the boy, "Are you ok? What the hell happened to your room?" Charlie spied the pristine white bandage wrapped around her brother's right hand and held it up, staring at him plaintively while she tried to calm her freak-out. To summon the strength to stay standing.

Nicholas seemed fine though, laughing uneasily as he answered, "I'm alright. Some kind of animal got in and bit me. But your friends came by and chased it away and fixed up my hand."

Charlie blinked hard and tried to shake some of the fog out of her head, some of the exhausted tremors out of the rest of her. "What friends?" she demanded. She hadn't been expecting anyone. But, then again, word travels fast in small towns. And Norma was just one of many busybodies who happened to be present during Charlie's impressive nosedive. Maybe someone had come by to check on Charlie. Hank and Emily, maybe? They were such a pair of insufferable do-gooders and had been bored out of their skulls since returning from college for the summer.

"Dean and Sam," Nicholas chirped, grinning, "They're really nice. Sam fixed my hand, and Dean ordered Chinese food."

Charlie groaned. Paul Young delivered for the Szechwan Palace. They used to go out, and she'd been successfully avoiding him since she got home (at the cost of some very excellent kung pao).

But something else was very wrong with the situation. "Dean and Sam?" Charlie repeated, trying to place the names. They clicked. The guys from the dinner. "Dean and Sam?! What?!"

Shielding Nicholas behind herself, Charlie marched off through the living room and into the kitchen where she found the brothers bickering quietly. Dean had his head in the fridge. Sam stood over him, looking impossibly _more_ pissy than he had when she'd met him that afternoon.

"What the _fuck_?!" Charlie shouted, making both men jump, making Dean smack his head inside the fridge. She grabbed a knife off the counter, vision swimming a bit even though she remained determined to defend herself and her brother from the pair of stalker freaks who'd apparently followed her home from work. Jesus, it was like a crappy _Law and Order_ episode. And, lucky her, Charlie had been cast as the hapless victim who likely wouldn't live through the opening credits.

Rubbing his head, his blonde hair fluffing and spiking adorably, Dean offered another charming smile. "Uh, sorry," he soothed, "We didn't mean to barge in on you, but, see, me and Sammy were driving around, and the brainiac got us lost. I noticed your car out front, so we decided to drop in. You know, say hi, check on how you were feeling. But, uh, some animal or something was attacking Nicky-"

"Only _I _call him Nicky," Charlie cut in fiercely, reflexively.

Sam snorted, and Dean's grin grew. "Ok," Dean went on, "Well, we scared the animal off him, but didn't manage to catch it, so we thought we'd hang out and keep an eye on things. In case it came back while you were asleep. Though it probably won't. I think we scared it away for good."

Charlie narrowed her eyes, considering the story. She shared a brief look with Nicholas, earning a hesitant nod of approval from the boy. She lowered the knife to her side, kneading her temple again and sighing, "Long as you're not freaky stalker axe-murderers or something... how did an animal get into the house?"

Nicholas shrugged, guessing, "It probably just climbed in through an open window. I think it was a raccoon. A really, really big one. But Dean and Sam chased it away. It probably won't be coming back." Something was off about the kid, the way he kept looking to Dean and Sam, wouldn't fully meet his sister's gaze during the strange story.

And Charlie's head really, really hurt, her agony increasing as the brief spike of adrenaline waned. "Did you call anyone?" she questioned, getting kind of nauseas and lightheaded, "Like, the cops or animal control or a doctor?"

"No," Nicholas chirped, upbeat and excited, fidgeting with a frayed end on his bandage, "Just Chinese."

And Paul. Good lord. "I think I need to sit down," Charlie announced, voice breathy and weak. She could feel herself kind of... swaying. Her head floating. Her knees buckling.

"Whoa!"

Instead of hitting the floor, again, like she expected, Charlie found herself closed in the solid warmth of Sam's arms. He was wearing at least two shirts, Charlie noticed, letting her head flop to rest on the man's brick wall of a chest as he carried her towards the couch in the living room. And she still felt pretty awful, but, damn, Sam was ripped. Certainly more so than Paul, that skinny, cheating bastard.

"Still with us?" Dean inquired, leaning over Charlie's prone form as his brother brushed her coppery red hair away from her bleary eyes and clammy forehead. Sam smiled sweetly.

"Mhmm," Charlie replied, pushing herself to sit up. "Don' know what's wrong with me," she murmured, "Shouldn' feel this bad."

"Guess you hit your head harder than you thought," Dean suggested, sharing a significant glance with his brother.

"Maybe we should take you to the hospital," Sam murmured, gaze focused and intense, "Get you checked out for real."

Charlie shook her head. Thought she did, anyways, but it didn't seem to want to cooperate. Like there was a gap between her brain and the rest of her, some signal delay. "No hospital," the young woman croaked, "'Sides, I don't think it's all to do with hitting my head. I've been hit before. Got a nasty concussion from softball in my Junior year. Wasn't anything like this. I'm just... tired. Feels like I haven't slept for days."

That got Sam perking up, the taller man leaning in impossibly closer. "Did you feel like that before you hit your head?" he asked, showing a great deal of tenderness and concern (certainly enough to be at odds with all the sulking and whining Charlie'd seen from him earlier).

Charlie nodded. "Ya," she sighed, rolling her shoulders, "A little this morning but not as bad. Maybe I'm getting sick." Giggling with a rising wave of delirious hysteria, the young woman suggested, "Maybe the damn panda's diseased. I keep waking up with the freaky thing in my room. Which, by the way, what the hell, Nicky?"

Nicholas's eyes went wide.

Sam didn't say anything else, just shared another terse look with his brother. There seemed to be a lot of unspoken significance in the look, none of which Charlie had the energy to even try to decipher. Really, as long as the pair weren't murderers, rapists, or thieves, she wasn't going to waste the energy worrying about them. Or their questionable intentions.

The doorbell rang.

"I'm not here," Charlie growled, pushing up to her feet and stumbling off to hide from Paul. And wasn't that just a pathetic cherry on top of such a crap pile of a day.

Despite protests from the brothers and Nicholas, Charlie managed to get herself into her room and get the door locked behind. She slumped down into her bed, pretending not to be straining to hear Paul's voice at the front door. The house wasn't very big though. There was really no mistaking him, especially when he demanded to know who Sam and Dean were and where Charlie was.

Charlie just huffed, snuggling into her covers. It'd been a long day, and more sleep seemed like an absolutely heavenly idea.

Only... something wasn't quite right. That only took a few minutes to figure out. Aside from the fact that Charlie felt like shit, she now suddenly felt... uncomfortable. Something squeezing her chest. The discomfort quickly became actual pain, pressure around her ribs and lungs progressing into a sort of... drain. Almost vampiric.

Between the pressure and the pain and the panic, Charlie found herself unable to breathe and therefore unable to scream for help. She opened her eyes.

The panda was back, its stitched-on grin and black button eyes slightly charred but still absolutely menacing. Charlie tried to push it away, like she'd done earlier when she'd found the beast in the exact same location. Unfortunately, the young woman's limbs were too heavy, uncooperative or maybe just... pinned under the fat panda arms and legs on either side of her. Her mouth gaped as her lungs tried and failed to pull in oxygen. Her eyes felt like they were going to bulge right out of her skull.

And the panda did nothing, just sat on Charlie and smiled.

Charlie knew she was dying. The world grew dim and faded out of focus.

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Dun Dun DUUUUUN... review, pretty please ;)


	4. Big Fucking Guns

4 - Big Fucking Guns

The door to Charlie's bedroom shattered inward, nothing but a shower of splinters by the time it reached her vision. She heard a shout and then the crushing pressure on her chest was gone.

She was free to choke and gasp and _breathe_. Which was definitely welcome, albeit excruciating.

It must've been the oxygen starvation, but Charlie could've sworn she saw that damn panda scurrying like a demented cockroach towards the two men standing in the doorway.

Standing in the doorway _with guns_.

_Ho. Ly. Shit._

If she'd had anything in her lungs, Charlie would've been screaming at the top of them.

"Sonofabitch!" Dean was shouting, sweeping the room with some scary caliber BFG. "That little freak is _fast_!"

"I _told you_ it wasn't dead!" Sam responded, more pissy than irate or even scared as he moved towards Charlie's bed. He had a BFG of his own but tucked it away, sparing Charlie a tight, trying-to-be-comforting smile before hooking both his rather large arms beneath the young woman and hefting her up bridal style, seemingly miles from the ground and propped against his massive chest for the second time in less than ten minutes. Before Charlie could eek out much of a protest or a 'please don't shoot or drop me, Mr. Sasquatch, sir,' Sam was effortlessly carrying her back into the hallway and then the living room. Charlie could still hear crashes and Dean's shouts echoing from behind.

Charlie gathered her meager strength, fought down the urge to puke and/or pass out, and looked around frantically for Nicholas. The boy was, thankfully, at her side, though appearing just as freaked as his sister was feeling, pale and shaky. Sam laid her down gently onto the couch again, motioning Nicholas to sit with her and then retrieving something from a large duffle nearby.

Then Sam was back and taking speedy a lap around the couch, stooped low and holding...

"Is it that... _salt_?" Charlie inquired, forcing her eyes to focus on the thick white line taking shape on the faded blue carpeting.

"Stay inside the circle and you'll be fine," Sam answered, response clipped and hurried. It was obvious that most of his attention was on the sounds of a struggle still coming loud and clear from the back of the house. After one more forced smile, Sam ran off in that general direction.

The sudden bursts of gunfire made Charlie jump, though the action was miniscule. The girl barely had the energy to keep her eyes open.

She looked to Nicholas again, noticing that his dark eyes were wide and wet and frightened, that he was staring down at her like he was terrified she would disappear, that he was holding his breath and barely blinking.

"S'ok, Nicky," Charlie slurred, stretching her fingertips out to touch his, "It'll be ok." Drained or not, unconscious or not, there was no way in hell Charlie was going to let _anything_ hurt her brother. She'd always put herself between him and danger. He had to know that.

Taking the gesture as permission, the boy leaned in close and hid his face against Charlie's shoulder. He curled up against her side, shaking, and held on tight. Every next shout or crash or shot made him twitch and whimper. Charlie kept up a steady stream of soothing nonsense, even though her strength was waning and soon all she could do was hum in a futile attempt to drown out the battle and the confusion and terror of herself and her brother.

After what seemed like a lifetime, silence fell like a hammer. The house went still. Charlie couldn't tell if she or Nicholas was shaking more. And then heavy footsteps sounded and the young woman let herself be tentatively relieved.

Dean's handsome face swam into view, full of triumph and concern. Covered in thin scratches. "You alright?" he questioned, feeling Charlie's forehead and then the weak pulse in her neck.

"Ya," she croaked in reply, indeed noticing that she still felt shitty but at least less like impending death. "You get it?" she whispered, though she still didn't quite know what _it_ was.

"Ya," Dean said, grinning, "Blew his fluffy little brains out. Just relax awhile. Me and Sammy are gonna take care of the body."

Charlie nodded fuzzily, biting back a growl when Dean reached out to ruffle Nicholas's shaggy hair. She wasn't in any mood to have her brother touched by a stranger, even one who'd probably just saved their lives.

The man didn't seem offended, disappearing for awhile. By the time Dean and Sam returned, smelling like smoke and melted polyester, Nicholas was certainly calmer and had even begun fussing over his sister. Charlie managed to sit up propped on some throw-pillows, feeling a lot better. It seemed like her strength was slowly returning, and with it her curiosity.

"Uh, hi," Charlie piped up, standing, being careful not to set a toe outside the salt circle (just in case), "What's up guys? How you doing? How 'bout them Yankees? Oh ya, and _what the fuck just happened_?!"

The brothers shared another look. Then Dean smiled at Charlie, chirping, "Imported toys, right? When will people learn?"

Charlie stared, her mouth hanging open in confusion and outrage and the smothered urge to laugh (or maybe to slap a bitch).

Sam chose that moment to step in, sighing heavily as he soothed, "Don't listen to him. I'll explain everything, but you might want to sit down first. It'll be kind of hard to believe."

Snorting, Charlie crossed her arms and responded, "A _stuffed panda_ just tried to _kill me_. I'll believe any explanation that doesn't end with been sent up to the whack shack."

Dean chuckled, elbowing his brother lightly before moving into the kitchen. "Well," the man announced, "No worries on that front, but let's eat while Sammy talks. Who wants mu shu?"

"I do!" Nicholas chirped, kind of taking the situation far too well. Charlie would've expected the kid to be sobbing his eyes out, not bouncing off to help Dean work their finicky microwave.

"Did I miss something?" Charlie wondered aloud.

Sam sank down into the couch, gesturing for the young woman to sit beside him. "What do you mean?" he asked, suddenly so... caring. Not at all like the pissy, overgrown brat she'd encountered earlier in the day.

"Nicky," the young woman clarified under her breath, watching warily while her brother chattered to Sam's, "He's a wuss. I didn't expect him to be so... ok with all this."

Smiling sweetly, _adorably_, Sam responded, "Oh, well, he did freak out a little earlier, when we first came in. But Dean talked to him, and he's been much better. Dean's pretty great with kids."

Things still weren't making complete sense, but at least they were kind of getting there. "Alright," Charlie breathed, finally sinking down next to Sam, taking comfort in the inherent protective strength of his imposing frame, "You might want to start from the very beginning."

The tall brunette blew out a long sigh, answering, "Well, I guess it starts with the carnival..."

Charlie should've known, but, then again, how could she? Sure, the carnie at the ping pong toss was a tool, and a weirdo, but how could anyone have predicted that he was handing out cursed prizes? Cursed prizes that terrorize and steal the life forces of their recipients, gradually rendering the poor winners comatose and then dead?

"That's, like, Twilight Zone shit," Charlie murmured, ravaging the kung pao because she didn't think she'd ever been so damn hungry in her entire life. She nearly skewered Dean's hand with her chopsticks when the foolish man made a move for her carton of pineapple fried rice.

He squealed like a girl.

Sam nearly choked, snorting into his beef and broccoli.

"You got the fucker though, right?" Charlie went on, ignoring Dean's pout. She was a little less enamored with the man after watching him and Nicholas walk around with chopsticks tucked under their upper lips like walrus tusks. And learning that he was the one who thought they'd killed the panda earlier, when he went after it in Nicholas's room with an aerosol can and a lighter. Genius.

"Ya," Sam answered, forcing himself to quiet even as he gasped around choked laughter, "He won't be giving out anymore cursed prizes."

Charlie nodded, reading the subtext in the statement. For all she knew, the carnie wouldn't be giving out anymore prizes period. The notion wasn't exactly heartbreaking.

"And you rounded up all the prizes he already did give out?" Charlie pressed, concerned that some other unfortunate ping pong toss champion was out there having the life sucked out of her.

"You were the only one he'd given since the ones that led up to the pattern in the first place," Sam reassured, gracing the young woman with a soft, entirely trustworthy smile, "Don't worry."

"Just checking your work," Charlie teased, "You thought you killed it after Nicky found it on me the first time and look how well that turned out." That was the part Charlie thought was really strange: her baby brother, who literally jumped at shadows, rushed in to save her life when it was being threatened, got attacked for his trouble, and seemed to not have been adversely affected by the experience. She was having a hard time sorting out the pride and affection from the absolute fear.

"I thought I turned the fugly thing to ash," Dean spoke up, shrugging, "But you live and you learn. Next cursed plushie gets no mercy."

Rolling her eyes, Charlie responded, "So comforting."

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Some small closure, but never fear! There is more to come, and, in the meantime, reviews would be excellent :)


	5. Bonding Time with the Hot Rescuer

5 - Bonding Time with the Hot Rescuer (or A Brief and Pointless Interlude)

She invited the Winchester brothers to stay a few days, owed it to them and felt safer with them there (just in case). But they only agreed to one night, said they had to be getting to their next hunt. She gave them free reign of her parents' bedroom, watched Dean flop happily into the king-size bed and declare dibs. Charlie left the brothers bickering, left for her own bed and tried to sleep.

Of course, she couldn't manage it. She was just too damn terrified of letting her guard down, of waking up again with some evil toy sucking the life out of her, of maybe not waking up at all. After maybe half an hour, Charlie got up and paced her room. After another hour of that, she took her jumpiness and nerves into the kitchen for a drink.

Sam was already there, eating cold leftover rice. Shirtless. And, damn, Charlie had _clearly_ been after the wrong brother. He was just as pretty and twice as built as Dean, infinitely huggable with his dark puppy-dog eyes and soft floppy hair. The fact that he'd stopped acting like a prissy girl had also done wonders for his hot factor. And, well... _shirtless_.

"Hey," Charlie greeted, going for the fridge and a nice frosty beer, pressing the beverage against her bruised right cheekbone.

Sam offered a gentle, heartwarming smile, returning, "Hey. I thought for sure you'd be asleep."

Shrugging, Charlie replied, "Couldn't." She took a seat beside him at the table, popped and sipped her drink. "How 'bout you? Dean won't share?"

Rolling his eyes but chuckling brightly, the young man answered, "Nah, I couldn't sleep either. Probably too much coffee today."

"It happens," Charlie said quietly, "Winter quarter, I chugged a bunch of espresso and energy drinks trying to stay up to study for midterms. My heart felt like someone had switched it to 'hummingbird,' and I didn't sleep for nearly a week. That's what I get for picking such a gnarly major." Mechanical Engineering was not for the faint of heart, and Charlie was smart but nowhere near smart enough to breeze through the mountains of work.

The slow, sad smile that came across Sam's face made Charlie's chest ache. "I remember those days," Sam stated fondly, wistfully, "I was pre-Law at Stanford. The course load was brutal."

"Wow," Charlie answered, impressed, "Stanford, huh? How'd you go from ivy-league pre-Law to blasting monster ass?" The girl giggled nervously, feeling herself develop a light blush, "And feel free to stop me if I'm getting too nosy. I have a tendency to babble."

"No, it's fine," Sam replied quietly, still looking sad even as he turned on a hundred-watt grin, "I was a hunter long before I ever went to Stanford. It's sort of the family business."

Charlie nodded. "Interesting," she said, "And how does a family get into that sort of business?"

The young man visually struggled to remain upbeat but didn't succeed in managing it. "For us," he stated softly, "It was... my mom. A demon killed her when I was a baby. My dad wanted revenge. Died not too long ago trying to get it."

"Oh," Charlie said, terribly guilty for bringing up such a horrible memory, "I'm so sorry. That's... that's awful. I mean, I never even imagined that these sorta things were really real. And that they're actually _out there_..." She trailed off, not quite knowing what else could possibly be said.

"Ya," Sam agreed. After only a few moments, he shrugged and, significantly more cheerful, declared, "Anyways, you shouldn't worry. Lightning usually doesn't strike twice and all. And we'll leave you with our number. To call in case you ever need any help again."

Laughing, Charlie replied, "Awesome. Was wondering how I would score _your_ digits now that I've already got Dean's. Still, I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight." Beaming at her slightly flustered companion, she went on, "But at least I have company. Wanna play cards or watch a movie or something?"

Sam chuckled, ruffling his dark floppy hair and answering, "Um, a movie sounds fun."

"Great!" Charlie chirped happily, standing and moving towards the cupboard, "I'll make popcorn. The movie shelf is in the living room. Pick whatever you want."

Charlie was quite pleased when she returned from her microwaving and found Sam standing near the television holding an old VHS of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_. "Good choice," she murmured, fiddling with some wires in order to get the DVD and Nicky's videogame system swapped out for the ancient VCR. Sam popped in the movie and then the two of them flopped down together on the couch. Charlie sat close, slyly, under the guise of more easily sharing the large bowl of popcorn. It wasn't long until she was snuggled beneath one of Sam's massive arms, cuddled comfortably against his solid chest.

And the whole thing was... nice. Sam giggled at all the best jokes and didn't seem to mind that Charlie was the type of person who liked to provide incessant commentary during movies. She felt his eyes on her increasingly more often as the night wore on, noticed more lingering touches, and she had no problem with that whatsoever.

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A celebratory posting for ya'll. My computer caught a virus and was down for nearly a week, but thankfully everything was backed up. More of an inconvenience than anything else, though I did get a lot of reading done while I was experiencing the technical difficulties. Anyways, this is kind of a fluff chapter, but more to come. Reviews are highly encouraged and greatly appreciated :)


	6. Sexual Blackmail

6 - Errands and Revelations Arising from Sexual Blackmail

Charlie woke... cozy. Sam was like a furnace, but the shady morning was just chilly enough for the trait to be pleasant rather than smothering. Reluctantly, Charlie untangled herself from the large man's long arms, stretched, noticed a note taped to Sam's forehead.

Dean and Nicholas had signed their regards and added in plenty of the obligatory teasing before stating that they'd gone to get breakfast in town. Would be back with the food within the hour.

Smiling softly, fondly at the note and then at the man against whom she'd found such restful sleep, Charlie decided on a shower.

By the time she got out, she was feeling pretty good. Energized. And Sam was just waking, stretching adorably into the spot Charlie had occupied, seeming to be searching the girl out. And, well, who was she to refuse? Throwing herself down onto the couch once more, Charlie draped herself against Sam's bare burly side, chuckling, "Morning, Sunshine."

"Morning," he slurred, blinking gradually, peacefully awake. He spared Charlie a small, tender smile. "You got to sleep after all," the young man observed, obviously pleased.

"Sure did," Charlie replied, very comfortable, "They should put you in pill form. Cure insomnia."

Sam's smile grew slowly and steadily wider, dimpled and sweet.

And Charlie just... she just couldn't help herself. She leaned up and kissed him, a delicate press of plump flesh as she dragged her fingertips tentatively, appreciatively along the man's finely sculpted abdomen, made his whole massive frame shudder like a junkie's.

Charlie breathed a laugh right into his startled but eager mouth. She pulled back, just out of range of Sam's seemingly instinctive attempt to chase her lips with his. "Stay," Charlie pleaded, withholding more until she got what she wanted, "Just one more day. Let me at least cook you guys dinner. When's the last time you had a home-cooked meal?"

He blinked down at her, his blown pupils nearly swallowing the murky blue-green of his irises, his humungous hands trapping Charlie's slim waist (and when the hell had that happened? She really needed to pay more attention).

Sam managed a nod, clearly just agreeing so that he would receive no further resistance when he surged forward once more.

He kissed like a man who'd had his heart ripped out and rubbed raw: he was greedy, needy, fierce. Charlie couldn't _believe _she'd dismissed him as fussy and uptight; he was anything but, practically vibrating with urgent intensity, careful but demanding, consuming. He actually _snarled _as he manhandled her body to straddle his, grinding her hard into his lap as his fingers and tongue played out a delicate harmony along every stretch of skin they could reach.

It was _divine_.

And surely it would have only gotten better had Dean and Nicholas not chosen that moment to return, a slam of the front door and Dean's chime of "Hey, dorks! Grub time!" abruptly announcing their presence.

Sam was so startled, so frantic and clumsy in his effort to get them separated before they were discovered that he nearly dumped Charlie right onto the floor. Freakish giant and excellent kisser or not, Charlie certainly would have had to kick his fine behind for such an offense. But she did give him points for keeping Nicholas from seeing and/or being scarred by walking in on his sister in what had certainly been a delightfully compromising position.

Charlie's brother was oblivious, even if Sam's wasn't; Dean made sure to wink and shoot a thumbs up as soon as Nicholas scampered off to unpack the breakfast feast.

Sam tried, rather unnecessarily, to be subtle, suggesting to Dean that another day, just to keep an eye out for more trouble in the town, would probably be beneficial; his puppy-dog face was mesmerizing. Dean agreed with far too much smirking and even volunteered to drive Nicholas to nature camp, citing a need to hit up the local library on a research mission afterwards. The fact that Sam snorted in enthusiastic skepticism had Charlie believing that something about the statement was pretty far outside of Dean's usual M.O. Oh well. At least he was cooperating.

With the pair gone once again, Charlie smirked at Sam, announcing, "We gotta go shopping. How do you feel about beef stew?"

"Uh," Sam gaped, somewhat confused, "It's good."

"Great," Charlie beamed, giving the tall brunette a playful hipcheck as she passed him on her way to the door, "Let's go."

In the car, Sam blinked at her like she'd suddenly sprouted a second head when Charlie handed him her iPod. "What?" she asked, waving the device and the cord that connected it to her radio, "Too much pressure?"

"Uh, no," Sam laughed, slightly self-conscious as he finally grabbed the magical metal brick and began scrolling through the extensive library it contained, "Dean just never lets me pick the music."

Smirking, Charlie gunned the engine, fired back, "I'm not you brother, Sam. And I hope you keep that in the forefront of your thinking as the day progresses. Or else certain activities I have planned might get _real _awkward."

The blush that rose to his cheeks was _adorable_, as was the poorly hidden smile. He picked the Offspring and Eve 6 and Alkaline Trio and scored himself even more points in the process (though, to be fair, there wasn't really anything on Charlie's iPod that would've been considered an unacceptable musical selection).

And having Sam with her in the grocery store was pretty damn convenient, Charlie found. He got stuff down off high shelves and charmed old Rose at the check-out out of a pair of lollipops that were supposed to be reserved for doe-eyed children like Nicholas.

"Flirt," Charlie accused, hanging off the young man's free arm as he gallantly carried the bags in the other. She smiled up at her companion around the stem of a cherry sucker, adding, "Thanks. Having you around kept the majority of conversation off my fucked-up eye."

"It's not that bad," Sam soothed sweetly, all grape-tinged lips and pity dimples (which happened to be just as adorable as his happiness dimples and nervousness dimples).

"I'm not fishing for compliments," Charlie chuckled, "And you aren't gonna hurt my feelings. My eye is pretty damn freaky, right?"

Snickering, Sam conceded, "Well... ya. But I have seen worse."

"Me, too," Charlie agreed, unlocking the car as they reached it, "This guy on my floor, he got so baked on Halloween last year that he ended up falling face-first right down a flight of concrete steps. His whole head swelled up like a big ole melon. Looked kinda like tie-dye with all the colors."

Sam chuckled warmly.

"Charlie! Hey, wait up!"

They turned. Teddy Memphis was running towards them, waving a lanky arm over his unruly head of curly black hair. By the time he reached them, the boy was panting. He doubled over for a moment to catch his breath and shove his round glasses--he liked to call them _spectacles_--further up his slim nose.

The boy was a year younger than Charlie, had been a year behind her at school. And he'd been nursing a bit of an epic crush for going on a decade now. He'd asked her to the prom. At the time, Charlie had been thankful to already be going with Paul because, as awkward as Teddy was, he was still a nice guy and a good friend and she wouldn't have had the heart to turn him down otherwise.

"Forgot your credit card," he puffed, grinning rather absurdly as he held out the square of plastic, "And you shoulda said hey. I was just moving stock in the back. Trying to get things in order so Gramma Rose doesn't get left with a mess when I head to State in the fall."

Smiling, Charlie accepted her card back and quipped, "Sorry, Teddy. I didn't know you were working today. How's the summer been treating you?"

"Not bad, not bad," he beamed, "Definitely haven't been seeing enough of you, Charlie-cakes. When you gonna let me take you to a movie or something so we can catch up?" Finally getting around to noticing Sam, he continued to smile brightly, sizing the older man up with a rather unsubtle look up and down. Sam was, without a doubt, much larger and much hotter than Teddy, taller by several inches and with probably at least twenty more pounds of just pure muscle mass. Not that Teddy would likely be aware of either fact. As skinny and weird as the kid was, he tended to still walk around with a fairly gargantuan ego and entirely unrealistic sense of self. It was part of what made him so adorable. "Hi," Teddy beamed, waving and bouncing on the balls of his feet, "I'm Teddy."

"I'm Sam," Sam greeted, shaking the kid's hand with a firm, amiable pump.

Charlie tried not to giggle as she saw Teddy try to hide a wince. He'd always been a bit delicate.

"You a friend of Charlie's from school?" Teddy questioned.

"Uh," Sam gaped, looking to the girl for some kind of guidance, "No, not from school. We just met."

"Well, ain't that sweet," Teddy joked, slightly moony as he smiled at the object of his affections, "Charlie-cakes sure does have a way with people."

Charlie laughed, shoving at the boy's bean-pole shoulder and ordering, "Aw, shut it, _Theodore_. You know I got the heart of an ornery old man." She smirked at his answering guffaw, adding, "Call me about that movie in a few days. For now, we gotta get home and get dinner started."

"Sure thing," Teddy answered, giggling with poorly contained excitement, "Be seeing you, Charlie. Take care of that eye! Nice to meet you, Sam." The kid bounced off back towards the grocery, apparently forgetting that they could still see him when he let out a victorious whoop and fist pump.

Back in the car, Sam chuckled, "He seems nice."

"A sweetheart," Charlie agreed, nudging the iPod back at her passenger and accidently dropping her credit card in the process.

The sliver of plastic fell on Sam's lap.

He picked it up and examined it carefully.

Charlie saw his lip twitch.

"Your last name is Browning?" he asked in a quivering voice, clearly doing his best not to laugh out loud, "As in _Charlie Browning_?"

Charlie sighed, gunning the engine. "My parents' weird sense of humor," the redhead declared, fondly exasperated, "I'd go by Charlotte, but it's kind of a mouthful, and once people hear what my last name is, they end up calling me Charlie anyways." She spared her companion a sideways glance and became rather mesmerized by the way he bit his smiling bottom lip in a continuing, rather valiant effort not to give in to the gathering guffaws. "Go ahead," she prompted good-naturedly, "It's nothing I haven't heard before."

His laughter felt like rain after a long drought. Which really didn't make sense at all, but that was just the feeling that Charlie got from Sam: that he didn't have nearly enough simple joy in his life. She was happy to give him some, even if it was at her own expense.

Sam's amusement never really died out, but it did lessen when they got back home and Charlie put him to work cleaning, peeling, and cutting the vegetables for her stew. Charlie kept herself busy making the beef stock from scratch, seasoning it with her special blend of peppers and red curry. Mmm. Spicy.

"So how'd you guys find me if you didn't know my name?" she mused aloud, stirring.

Sam smirked, eyes obscured by those sweet, floppy bangs as he kept his gaze down and on the neat slices of celery he was producing. "Your car," he explained quietly, "The parking lot at the fairgrounds had security cameras, and we got a look at the footage. We couldn't read the plate number, but we did see that you got on the highway going north. We just checked every town we drove through for your car. It was Dean's idea. I was sure it wouldn't work. We sort of had a bet. I have to let Dean pick music, food, and motels for a month, and not complain at all. That's why I was a little, uh, cranky when we met you in the diner."

"Aw, poor baby," Charlie teased, "You'll excuse me if I'm not too upset about you losing that particular wager."

Sam looked up, stunned. His stare was open and soft, earnest, fixated. "I'm glad I lost," he insisted.

Charlie felt her face get hot. Damnit. She hadn't blushed that hard since she was twelve and about to get her first kiss from her first boyfriend.

She really hoped that this thing with Sam wouldn't end in the same lesson in heartache. What was going to happen, soon and then afterward, had already been clearly laid out. Straight-forward. No nonsense or romantic illusions of a happily-ever-after involving each other. And still, Charlie knew that, if he really wanted to (probably even if he didn't), Sam could break her heart.

But then he was standing over her, towering, his hands coming up to cradle her face. His hands were huge and smelled like celery and raw potatoes--tangy and earthy--and he stroked his cool thumbs across the fiery flush pooling along her cheekbones. Sam's eyes were dark again, hooded and intense, and Charlie almost didn't have time to suck in a quick, startled breath before the man was pushing her back against the counter and melding his body to hers, kissing her with such ferocity that it really didn't matter how much or how little air she'd managed to take in because it was _all gone now_.

Sam hoisted her right off her feet in one fluid, effortless move, letting her sit on the counter and wrap her long legs around his waist and grind into the frilly pink apron she'd wrapped around him as penance for the laughing jag during the ride home.

As delightful as the kiss and all that went along with it were, thoughts of Sam in the apron had Charlie laughing into the man's mouth, breaking herself mostly out of the trance and pulling back with a wide, adoring smile.

"Not so fast, slick," she admonished, punctuating the assertion with another few sloppy, lingering pecks to Sam's jaw and throat, "Stew's gotta get cooking. We can have all the fun we want just right after."

Despite an obvious hard-on and a complete lack of desire to stop with his gentle, demanding caresses--and when the hell had that boy gotten those huge hands under Charlie's shirt? Jesus, she really needed to stop getting so distracted--Sam nodded, stepping back and turning his back and breathing deeply. Tension seemed to gather exponentially in his deliciously broad shoulders. Like a rubber band ready to snap.

Charlie hopped down from the counter, smirking wickedly as she gave Sam's ass a firm slap and got back to cooking. And if she didn't feel at all bad about his truly unmanly yelp and the smoldering glare that followed, well, she was going to be making it up to him soon enough.

They finished the vegetables together, though Sam's slices got increasingly less perfect and uniform as Charlie continued to toy with him, teasing and insinuating and baiting, brushing needlessly close at all available opportunities. It was tons of fun to get the normally contained man so flustered, not to mention the effect the pseudo-foreplay was having on Charlie herself. By the time all the ingredients had finally been added and the pot fixed on a low, steady heat, Sam was flushed and agitated, more than ready for the game to be over but also waiting for Charlie's go-ahead. Which was just all kinds of adorable. He obviously didn't take as well to the slow simmer. Impatient bastard. Must be a youngest child thing, always wanting instant gratification.

She smirked, turning and sauntering out of the kitchen with a seductive sway to her hips, peeling her t-shirt over her head with unhurried, exaggerated movements that she knew accentuated the curve of her lithe legs and waist and backbone.

She heard Sam growl, low and animalistic, and then he was coming at her like a freight train made of horny man.

Many, _many_ hours of unbelievably fantastic sex later (and it wasn't like she had that much to compare it to, but _goddamn_), Charlie was too sore and satisfied and exhausted to move but had to anyways. Dinner needed to be seen to, and Nicholas and Dean would be coming home soon. And she very much preferred not to face either while still smelly and rumpled from the marathon passion in which she had just joyously partaken. She also resolved to do something about all the condom wrappers littering the floor of her room... later...

Leaving Sam to sleep the well-earned sleep of a finally sated sex god, Charlie ventured out of bed for yet another shower. The hot water felt fantastic on her loose, overworked muscles, and the girl just shut her eyes and enjoyed for awhile. In the moment, you know? Feeling blissed out and, above all else, _safe_.

Safe had been at a premium since the whole killer-stuffed-panda incident. It was like falling down a rabbit hole, finally hitting the bottom and being told, with absolute certainty, that the trip was one-way, welcome to your new life, watch out for the Queen of Hearts cuz she can be a real bitch this time of the month.

Not quite ten minutes later, when she heard the bathroom door open and close, Charlie did not bother opening her eyes. "Damn, Sam," she chuckled languidly, "Gonna have to hurry if you wanna go again."

She got no answer but heard the glass shower door slide open.

She got a blast of cold air and a sudden flashback of _Psycho_, both accompanied by a very severe case of the creeps. A shudder rattled violently along the length of her spine.

When strong hands closed around her hips, she jumped and shrieked, lashing out with everything in her.

"Whoa," Sam's deep voice soothed as he easily trapped both Charlie's wrists in one huge fist, "Take it easy. It's just me."

Charlie immediately stopped fighting, opening her eyes to Sam's wet, concerned-puppy expression. She felt like the world's biggest idiot. "Sorry," she whispered, willing her heart to stop jackhammering so obviously.

"It's alright," Sam replied, frowning and pressing his naked body against hers, touching with nothing but tenderness and care, "What was that about?"

Laughing it off, Charlie slid her now-free arms around the young man's strong neck, rested her head on the powerful swell of his chest and listened to his steady heartbeat for a few calming moments. "Nothing," she insisted, rising up on tiptoes to brush a tender kiss to his pouting mouth, "Just talked myself into been freaked out. Guess I'm still a little jumpy."

Sam's rough hands framed the curve of her waist as the huge man backed her against the tiled wall. "You're safe now," he declared, expression so heartfelt and open that Charlie had a hard time doing anything but believing in it completely.

She sighed, melting once again into the warm shower spray and Sam's intense, consuming love-making. Damn, the boy sure did have some crazy stamina. And he was a bit bitey, too. Not that Charlie was complaining. No, sir.

Afterwards, despite his playful protests, she left Sam to finish showering, wrapped herself in a towel, and skipped off down the hall. She was smiling and humming and wrestling her long, water-dark hair into a messy, off-center braid. The world was feeling like a pretty damn good place.

The last thing Charlie remembered, before her head exploded in pain and her vision went white, was adding barley to the stew.

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Mwahahaha. I warned you there was more. Hope no one's too disappointed with the lack of graphic sex. Maybe I'll get the urge to write the missing scenes at a later date ;)


	7. Exactly What Breed of Mental Patient

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*points at rating* This chapter is intended for mature audiences. Reader discretion is advised.

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7 - Exactly What Breed of Mental Patient

Based on previous experience, Charlie was pretty damn sure she had a concussion. Her skull felt at least two sizes too small; her eyes and teeth ached; her stomach and eardrums desperately wanted to turn themselves inside-out; her vision and consciousness blinked on and off for indeterminate (sometimes separate) intervals.

Ever since waking up shackled to a pipe in what had to be the _filthiest_ room she'd ever encountered, the redhead had been confused and terrified in equal parts, struggling to get free and shouting hoarsely for help whenever the pain in her head ebbed enough for either to be possible without invoking searing agony and subsequent oblivion.

By the time the door unlocked and opened and her captor showed his face, Charlie had been reduced to a mostly incoherent pile of horror and hurt. She whimpered and tried to shrink into the wall, feeling very small and cowardly and vulnerable.

The man who entered would not have been menacing in any other circumstances. He was not large or evil-looking. He wore a white collared shirt and a sweater vest and khaki slacks and loafers and square, wire-rimmed bifocals; he had short salt-and-pepper hair and crow's feet around his very light, very bright blue eyes, a nose that a more poetic person might describe as aquiline.

But he also had a slow, cruel smile. Like cyanide. Like shrapnel.

Charlie realized in a sudden, sickening flash that she was still naked. What the fuck? She couldn't have gotten snatched _after_ getting dressed? Was she the cosmic joke of the week or something?

"Hello," the man stated pleasantly, advancing to squat just out of leg's length of Charlie's huddled form (which was unfortunate because she _so_ would've kicked him in his creepy fucking face). "Please stop struggling," he instructed softly, almost sounding concerned, "You're damaging your wrists, and you won't get free."

"FUCK YOU!" Charlie spat, curling away and cowering behind her bent legs in a mostly futile attempt to hide her nudity, "Let me go, you goddamn nut-bag!"

Nut-Bag's smile grew wider and even more terrifying. He jumped forward in a dizzyingly fast movement and pinned Charlie against the wall.

She whimpered helplessly, doing her best and still failing to twist away. Trapped, smothered, violated.

He petted matted hair away from her face. "I was going to kill you," Nut-Bag whispered, "I still can." Despite Charlie's shrieks of protest, he pressed a sloppy kiss to each of the girl's tightly clenched eyelids. "It'd be such a waste, but I still can," Charlie heard him coo, sure that any minute now she was going to puke or shake to pieces or most likely both. He licked her from collarbone to cheekbone, slow, noisily slurping up sweat and blood and hysterical tears. "Remember that now," Nut-Bag ordered, finally, _finally _pulling away.

Charlie curled tighter into herself and the wall and couldn't stop crying, barely even heard the man walking off or the door slamming shut behind him once again.

She blacked out for awhile but then woke up and cried some more, nearly choking on revulsion and terror. She screamed for help until her voice just quit. At some point, she passed out again. And woke up and, unable to think of anything else to do (other than freak out some more, of course), sang quietly to herself, whatever came to mind but pretty much always coming back to the same Queen chorus, back to "_Save, save, saaaave me! I'm naked and I'm faaaaar from home_."

Charlie was fairly sure by that point that she was delirious, possibly in shock, possibly much more severely concussed than she had originally estimated. At the very least very quickly losing her grip on sanity.

Next time she faded into consciousness (with no recollection at all of fading out), Nut-Bag was back again. She didn't hear him come back but opened her eyes and he was already there, setting up a tripod and video camera in the center of the room.

Despite wanting to simply _disappear_, Charlie felt her mind fill with all the sick things this sick fuck could want to record himself doing to her. And she shuddered and started to cry again.

Nut-Bag noticed that she was awake, turning away from the camera only briefly to spare the young woman a cruel smirk. As he went back to his work, the man casually declared, "They think they killed my brother."

Charlie said nothing. Didn't think it was wise, given the situation, to antagonize her captor any further. No matter what the girl's mother and friends might insist, she was able to recognize the rare occasions that warranted keeping her big mouth shut.

"They're wrong," the creepy man went on, carefully bundling a set of wires that ran down from the video camera, along the filthy concrete floor, and into a sleek new laptop, "They only killed that body. But it wasn't my brother's body. He'd already left and come home to me." Nut-Bag chuckled to himself, adding, "My brother _always_ comes home to me."

Crying quietly, Charlie begged, "Please, let me go. I'm sorry. Please. I'm sorry."

The man made a soft _tsk tsk_, not bothering to look up as he replied, "Nothing personal. My brother, he's a bit of a coveter. When he saw you moaning like a whore for the hunter, well, he decided that he just had to have you."

Charlie was sobbing so hard that breathing became an issue. Her head spun and her vision dimmed and she was sure she would be passing out again soon and fought hard against the rising tide of darkness.

"I like to give my brother everything he wants," Nut-Bag went on, still fiddling with the damn camera, "That's the only reason I let him work the carnival to begin with. I knew it would draw attention, but he loves it. Begged for weeks. We grew up in one, ages and ages ago. Yoska loves watching the people, creating a bit of mischief among them. Punishing the ones who don't have respect." With a mocking wink, the man laughed, "That'd be you, in case you were wondering. You were cursed because you have no respect. The thing with the stuffed pandas is a little strange for my tastes. Showy, you now? But it usually does the trick."

"I didn't know," Charlie whimpered, hiccupping helplessly, "I didn't know. I'm sorry. Please."

The man stood to his full height, brushed off his clothes and smoothed down his hair. "Save it for the camera, sweetheart," he teased, switching the device on with a flourish, "And say hello to your friends. They should be getting a live feed right about now."

The thought only made Charlie cry impossibly harder. Sounding hysterical and inhuman even to her own ears, she screamed, "HELP!!!! HELP ME!!! SOMEBODY_ HELP ME_!!!"

"That's the ticket," Nut-Bag laughed gruffly, all gleaming teeth and maniac eyes as he stalked closer, "Let's give 'em a good show." He crossed the room and pinned Charlie down. His eyes shuttered to pure black, and, as Charlie instinctively tried to scream in abject terror, the man forced his tongue into her mouth.

Charlie was sure that that was the moment in which she would finally be raped and killed (or killed and raped? It was hard to tell exactly what breed of mental patient she was dealing with). She tried to prepare herself, but no amount of internal coaxing managed to convince the girl not to fear whatever would follow. Charlie was strong but not that strong. She didn't want to be violated, and she sure as _hell _didn't want to die.

But the creepy man backed off after only a dozen or so eternal seconds, leaving a half-numb, bee-stung feeling in Charlie's mouth, a taste like overripe strawberries that had been stored in an overripe jockstrap. His eyes shuttered back to normal, bright blue irises set in a field of blessed white. Then Nut-Bag turned and left, left the heavy metal door standing wide open and left Charlie to shudder violently in the sudden burst of cold air that entered.

And she just sat there, for what felt like hours but probably wasn't, screaming and sobbing, aware of nothing but panic and cold and pain and the camera's unblinking stare transmitting it all to who the fuck knew who and where.

Gradually, she noticed a comfortable warmth spreading out of from her gut like one-too-many shots. And as soon as she noticed the sensation, it was suddenly that much more intense. Charlie shivered and felt her limbs go electric, the tingle pooling in a maddening ache between her thighs. She got chills and then, like a flash, was sure she would combust from the unbearable sensation of fire coursing through her veins, simmering her blood and organs and skin.

Charlie knew what the feeling was but didn't want to admit it to herself. What the fuck kind of sick freak would be overcome with lust at a time like that? More intense lust than she'd ever felt at any other point in her entire life, no less? The young woman tried her best to exercise some higher brain function, tried to will her traitorous body into being cold and terrified and sore again, like it was supposed to be, given the situation.

Didn't work.

A low moaning noise started up. Charlie took a stupidly long time to realize that the noise was coming from her own mouth, from deep in her own chest as her own torso and limbs squirmed, thrashed with the restlessness brought on by whatever the fuck was wrong. And Charlie _knew_ that something had to be wrong. Very, _very_ wrong.

Charlie had no idea how long she was left alone, how long she moaned and writhed and tried without success to find some relief to the fierce, almost painful wanting that had gripped absolutely every cell in her hypersensitive body. Her wrists were bleeding from cuffs, but even the slow, hot slide of blood down her arms felt unbearably erotic.

Eventually, a new man came in. Charlie could smell him before he showed himself, a heady whiff of _male_ nearly driving her right off the edge. She shrieked, feral and desperate, arching off the filthy concrete floor and screaming, "God, please! PLEASE!!"

Charlie was almost too far gone to appreciate much about the man except that he was a_ man_ and therefore the answer to the ravenous pull in her gut. She blinked through vision that had been dimmed by sheer overstimulation and saw that the man who came in was young, huge, pretty in a way no man had a right to be, tall, obviously muscled. He had spiky black hair and freckles, and the skin on his face was baby smooth. Charlie would've wanted to pinch his cheeks had the man's sweet prettiness not been ruined by the absolutely evil curl of his smirking lips, the glittering beetle-black of both his eyes. Despite wanting nothing more than to fuck his brains out, Charlie remembered to be afraid. She whimpered and tried to twist away and only managed to rekindle the pain in her bloody wrists.

"Hey there, pretty," the man cooed, voice sweet and slimy as he stalked in close, grabbed Charlie by the hair and forced her head back roughly.

Charlie moaned, her eyes rolling like she was having a seizure. Whether from pleasure or pain was entirely impossible to determine. Whatever it was, there was just too damn much of it to process any longer.

"That's it," the man laughed, pressing his broad fingers to Charlie's lips, "Not so stuck up now, are you?"

Without hesitation, Charlie sucked the man's fingers into her mouth. He had a nauseating tang on his skin, like rotten eggs, but Charlie couldn't make herself care. She decided, absently, that this must be the carnie from whom she'd won the panda, that this must be the Yoska to whom Nut-Bag had referred.

"That's a good girl," Yoska teased almost lovingly, letting Charlie suck for a few long moments before finally pulling his fingers back.

Charlie whimpered and whined and wriggled at the loss.

He patted Charlie's bare abdomen, chucking, "We'll have you tamed in no time." He got to his feet, barely paying attention to Charlie's continued moans and horrified, desperate begging. He moved to stare into the camera, his body's fluid grace and unrestrained power clearly evident in the smooth glide of the movement. "Stay tuned, hunters," Yoska cackled, practically pirouetting around the back of the device, making the camera zoom in close on Charlie. "Gonna be a top-notch spank-bank entry," he sing-songed giddily, "This little one's 'bout ready to mount anything that moves."

Charlie began to moan and could not stop, panting and breathless, begging, "Please. God, please. Please. Oh. Oh, God. Please."

She wanted to scream STOP. Please make it _STOP_. But she never managed to get that far into the thought, and, besides, the needy whine in her voice was clearly asking for something else altogether. Her skin sizzled and crawled, starving for contact.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" she heard Yoska chuckle, heard the rustle of him shedding clothing and felt both excited and ill, felt the lust like a heavy drug, like an overdose, "My brother has quite the talent. Not fair that he gets to be an incubus and I'm stuck as a regular old demon, but he always did have more luck with the ladies. Bastard. Though he's good about sharing... You know, this pretty thing can actually _die_ if she doesn't get some meat in her? Some girls' hearts just can't take the strain. A few've overheated so bad that their brains boiled in their skulls."

Charlie heard his words and knew she should be afraid. But she was finding it hard to care about anything other than the smothering _need_ screaming for attention.

"Takes several hours at least though," Yoska went on, the rasp of his zipper apparent even over Charlie's continuous moaning and begging. God, she was _begging_. She wanted to stop begging and couldn't make herself. "I won't keep sweet little Charlie waiting that long," the man added, his voice sounding closer, mocking, "Wouldn't be very gentlemanly of me, now would it?"

Charlie started screaming when he touched her wrists. She seemed to have completely lost the ability to tell whether the sensation was good or bad; all she knew was that it was _too much_ and _not enough_.

The cuffs clicked and she was free. Free to run. Charlie _ordered_ herself to run.

Instead, her shivering body hurled itself at her captor, rubbing against him like an animal in heat. And she couldn't stop. Thought she might actually be in pain from the intensity of the feeling but _knew_ that she would go absolutely insane if she stopped.

_Stop._

_God. Stop. Please. Don't._

Only, it was coming out like, "Please. Please, don't stop. God. Don't stop."

"Come on, sweetheart," the man soothed, restraining Charlie's needy little body with his huge, powerful hands.

(Charlie got a sudden flash of Sam, his huge hands on her hips, strong but tender as they skimmed her heated flesh.)

"C'mere," the man went on, sinking to his back on the floor, center stage. He let go of Charlie, used both hands to hold up his thick, ugly member, "I'll let you bounce on my cock for awhile. That's it, come on. Squat down on it like the whore you are. Let's get those titties swinging."

(Sam whispering nonsense while he pinned Charlie to the bed, stroking with care, slowly in and out of her, nuzzling and nipping at her jaw.)

"Come'n get it while it's hot," the man laughed, cruel, "Bring that fine ass over here, you slutty cunt. Take what I'm giving and be grateful for it."

(Sam growling low in his throat, pressing kisses along Charlie's collarbones, trailing worshipfully down her sternum, pausing briefly to swirl his tongue into her navel.)

"Hey, stupid bitch," Yoska shouted, his tone gone harsh and angry, "Easy way or hard way, your choice."

Charlie came out of her reverie. Nothing had really changed, but she felt like she had a momentary handle on the waves of sick lust that desperately wanted her to fuck this awful man.

She moved closer to him, saw him give a wolfish, self-satisfied smile.

And then she stomped on his cock and ran like hell.

As she rushed out into the dank, dark hallway, Charlie could hear the man howling and cursing in pain. She was still finding it rather hard to think, but she was fairly sure that she hit him hard enough to cripple him for at least a few minutes. She hoped that would be enough time to put some significant distance between them.

Charlie ran through what felt like a maze, cold concrete making her bare feet ache, the hot, foul fire still burning her up with need from the inside out. Sometimes, the girl had to run almost doubled over, gasping and shuddering and trying to think past the urge to hole up somewhere and diddle herself until she stopped feeling like she would die if she didn't. She almost gave in.

And then she heard a renewed scream of rage echo down the hallway. She knew that Yoska was up and after her (_way_ sooner than expected, goddamnit), and she pushed through the pain of denial and just _ran_.

And ran and ran and ran, at times half blind, having to grope, guess, stumble along. But she kept herself moving as fast as possible.

Until Nut-Bag stepped into her path, gaze fierce, eyes shuttering to black as he advanced, and Charlie was trapped between the two insane brothers with nowhere left to run.

A particularly severe wave of wanting crashed over the girl's body, made her stomach cramp and her knees give out. She fell to the floor, hard, and curled in on herself and moaned and sobbed and tried to piece together enough brain cells to beg not to be murdered like she suspected she would be shortly.

But then, like a fucking miracle, like a white knight, Sam rounded the corner, coming up behind Nut-Bag with... ok, so maybe Charlie never envisioned being rescued by a floppy haired man with a Super Soaker, but whatever. If Sam could pull it off, she was definitely on board.

Yoska must've arrived in time to see Sam coming up behind his brother and shouted, "MORIC!" He was too late though. Sam opened fire with the squirt gun. Which Charlie probably wouldn't have used as a first choice over an _actual _gun, but the water hit Nut-Bag (Moric, apparently), and a cloud of smoke erupted from his body at the same moment that a wail of pain erupted from his mouth.

From the reaction, Charlie had to guess that there was acid inside the toy rather than water... except that the man's clothing and skin didn't seem to be affected...

Charlie shrank against a wall, trying to be as small and inconspicuous as possible, both fists digging into her stomach as she moaned involuntarily.

"Leave him alone!" Yoska snarled, seizing Charlie by the hair again, hauling her halfway to her feet and shaking her viciously, "Or else I'm going to fuck this cunt to death and send you her head!!"

In Charlie's altered state, she actually didn't think that would be such a bad idea. Which alerted the girl to just how far gone she was. But, really, as long as Yoska's plan of action occurred in that order, Charlie wasn't finding that much of a problem with it. "Fuck me," she whimpered, to no one in particular, "God, please, just fuck me." She might've been crying, wanted it that bad because every second she didn't have it hurt worse than the one before.

Her eyes were darting, refusing to stay in one spot for longer than a few moments. That was the only reason she saw Sam's expression of heartbreak, which was quickly masked by another of concern and then anger, and then that was when Charlie's gaze ricocheted onto Moric. Moric who was still on the floor, shrieking and smoking as Sam occasionally wetted him down with the Super Soaker.

"Let her go," Charlie heard Sam's deep voice rumble, low and dangerous in a way that went straight to her gut, made the young woman moan aloud and writhe desperately.

"Get away from my brother," Yoska hissed, hateful and dark. He gave Charlie's hair another yank, and the young woman cried out sharply, sobbing and squirming.

Charlie was pretty far gone by that point and had a bit of trouble keeping track of what came next.

She thought she heard Dean's voice, kind of chanting, but it was hard to tell because the words sounded like gibberish. Or maybe another language that Charlie just had absolutely no capacity to appreciate.

Yoska and Moric both shrieked in pain. Yoska let go of Charlie's hair, let the young woman tumble roughly, limply to the ground.

The chanting continued, steady, and the screams went on for awhile, too. At some point, Charlie closed her eyes, and when she managed to get them open, all she could see was swirling black.

It wasn't a particularly good sign, but the black dissipated, like smoke fading from the sky after a wildfire. And then there was just mildewed ceiling.

She was vaguely aware of whimpering, sobbing, too terrified and overwhelmed with lust to even move. Well, that wasn't true. Her hips bucked frantically all on their own, humping the air in a truly humiliating pantomime.

And then she was in Sam's arms, wrapped in a huge flannel, still sobbing and whimpering but suddenly finding the strength to hold on tight and not let go, to breathe the man in deep and know that everything was going to be alright.

"It's alright," Sam soothed. God_damn_ he had a sexy voice. "It's alright," he said, "You're safe now. Everything's going to be alright."

"Sam," Dean stated, sharp, all business. And fuck if that wasn't kind of sexy, too... "Sam," he said again, like he wasn't sure he was being paid attention to, "Take her to the car."

"I-I-" Sam responded, sad, uncertain, "No. No, Dean. She's- Jesus, look at her! I can't do that do her!"

There was silence. Well, except for Charlie's moaning and muttering of broken X-rated pleas.

"That douchebag wasn't joking," Dean finally reported, quiet and stern, "She could die. Incubus venom is scary shit, and she got one helluva dose."

"Wha-What?" Charlie panted, edging back to panic, flailing weakly, "What?! What's wrong with me?!"

"Hey, relax," Sam soothed, expression stony even as his voice remained kind, "You're going to be fine. I promise."

Charlie could only mewl desperately in reply, distracted again by the firestorm in her gut.

And with that, Sam carried her out to the car.

xxxxxxxxxx

No idea where this came from, but I try not to deny my strange imagination from running wild in whatever directions it sees fit. Hehe. Anyways, more to come, and reviews will be snuggled like rabbits in a Steinbeck novel. But reviewers won't be. Because that got me in trouble last time... ;)


	8. Walk of Shame

8 - Walk of Shame

Charlie woke before Sam, which, if the girl's fevered memories of the last forty-eight hours could be trusted, was to be expected; after that first encounter in the back of the Impala to take the edge off the venom, the Winchester brothers had taken her home where she'd barely allowed them to bandage her wrists and examine her minor head wound before promptly dragging Sam (and failing to drag Dean as well) back to her room, fucking the poor man practically comatose, and then passing out right on top of him. Since she found herself blinking awake still sprawled across Sam's chest, Charlie deduced that he'd succumbed to exhaustion very shortly afterward.

The redhead felt her face grow hot with absolute mortification. God, the things she'd _done_. The things she'd _said_. What the hell had come over her? She felt like a total whore and just wanted to do was slink away and hide.

Her attempts to do so alerted the teen to the intense all-over ache of her overtaxed muscles and the fact that she wasn't likely to be going anywhere soon without crutches. Possibly a wheelchair. And, absent either of those, she was going to need Sam's help to get herself standing.

But she just... _couldn't_ face him. So she kept on trying to move, squirming and biting back pained whimpers and holding her breath every time her efforts made Sam move or sigh or hum or reach out in his sleep.

Eventually and with great pain, Charlie got herself up. Took a step. The young woman's knees promptly buckled, and her exhausted body collapsed roughly to the floor. Her palms and knees stung. Her back and legs and arms ached. Her head throbbed, and, very quickly, Charlie began to cry.

"Hey," Sam murmured gently, suddenly at her side, reaching out hesitantly, "Are you hurt?"

Charlie shook her head, gave another few weak sobs before hoarsely insisting, "I want a shower."

Nodding, rubbing her shaking back, Sam asked, "Can you walk?"

Charlie shook her head, yet more humiliation burning her eyes.

Sam picked her up, carefully, but not before draping a discarded flannel around her trembling shoulders. He carried her down the hall and into the bathroom.

"Where's Nicky?" Charlie croaked, resting her head on Sam's chest, curling into his bare skin.

"Dean's got him," the young man declared. His voice was quiet and steady. Deep. He set her down on the closed toilet seat and ran the water.

Charlie stared at all the assorted scars littering his broad back. She shivered, her fingers itching to touch, to read them like Braille and know the man who wore them. The man who had saved her life and sanity. The man who she could barely look in the eye anymore...

Sam turned to her, hesitantly reached out to cradle her face and seemed encouraged when she didn't recoil. When she leaned into the gentle caress and let him unwind the bandages from around her raw wrists. He inspected the crusted scabs, the rings of mottled bruises. He asked, "Do you want some painkillers?"

Shaking her head, Charlie weakly sobbed, "I'm sorry. I... I'm not really like that. I couldn't make myself stop!"

"I know," Sam murmured, "It was the incubus venom." At Charlie's clueless sniffle, the young man added, "An incubus is a kind of demon. They prey on women, using sex to drain their life forces."

Charlie laughed and swiped her eyes, staring off into the swirling water in the bathtub, the lavender-scented froth. "Suddenly every fucking thing wants my life force," she joked bitterly, "It's like creepy-bastard catnip."

Sam didn't say anything for a few long moments as the tub filled. Then he helped Charlie get in, warned her to be careful of the knot on the back of her head (where the demon brothers had knocked her out, it seemed), and then he left her alone.

Charlie cried for awhile then fell asleep. Afterward, she felt much better. Not great but at least not quite as sore and hysterical. More herself. What had happened was pretty awful, but she'd survived. With some effort and concentration, she got out of the tepid water and, shakily, headed to her room to dress.

She found Sam in the kitchen, staring sadly into space. He jumped nearly a mile when Charlie sat down beside him. Smiling softly, the girl inquired, "Is there any stew left?"

Sam was up in an instant and fixing her a bowl.

They didn't talk as she ate; there didn't seem to be anything to say.

Two hours and another crying jag and nap later, Dean brought Nicholas home. The little boy burrowed into his sister's side and refused to budge. He fussed over all Charlie's assorted injuries and asked if she was ok at least a hundred times, made her promise not to get kidnapped ever again. Charlie nearly cried because the kid was just too sweet. And because, even though it was her job to take care of him, Nicholas adapted pretty damn well to the role reversal.

The Winchesters stuck around for awhile. Over a week. They helped look after Nicholas and turn away inquisitive townsfolk, claiming that Charlie was laid up with the flu. Dean was a surprisingly good cook and treated them to everything from pancakes to pork chops.

The situation between her and Sam stayed awkward. Every time she tried to talk at length to her rescuer, the words just... stuck in her throat, another lump of the tears that wouldn't quit coming. She didn't want anyone around her when she cried, but, most times, Nicholas would crawl into her bed anyways and stay until she managed to force herself to stop. He hugged her and told her that everything was ok, that she was safe now. But she didn't believe him and didn't think she'd ever feel truly safe ever again.

And then the Winchesters were leaving, loading up their sleek car while Nicholas helped and while Charlie watched from the porch, watched Dean high-five her little brother and swing him up into the air, giggling. Watched Sam smirk but hang back and respectfully keep his gaze away from her. Oozing guilt from every pore.

Without really making the decision to do so, Charlie found herself walking across the wide driveway, easily sneaking up on Sam. "Hey," she said, lightly squeezing his elbow, startling the tall man, "Come inside for a minute?"

Sam nodded and followed Charlie into the house.

She could still hear Dean and Nicholas rough-housing outside, their laughter loud and bright like the summer afternoon. Charlie faced Sam, stared up into his sorrowful eyes and didn't feel like crying anymore. She smiled, wound her arms around his thick trunk and pressed her ear against his heart. "You saved us," she whispered, sighing with relief when she felt Sam hug her back, "Thank you."

"It's my job," he murmured.

Chuckling softly, Charlie replied, "If that's the way you wanna play this, then job well done, Sam Winchester." She rose up on tiptoes and brushed a soft kiss to his velvety lips, grinning and adding, "You're damn good at what you do."

His expression wavered between puzzled and amused, and the young man finally laughed.

The Browning house seemed oddly silent after the brothers left, the weeks strangely empty. Charlie went back to waiting tables, wore thick bangles on both wrists until the scabs and bruises faded. She started spiking the diner's drink machine with holy water. She barely slept at night and jumped at every shadow.

She let Teddy Memphis take her to the movies but couldn't handle sitting for that long in the dark, not being able to see what was sneaking up behind her. She walked out halfway through the flick, and Teddy didn't understand but was sweet about it. They bought sodas from the gas station and strolled along Main Street until the sun started to set, until Charlie started to get anxious again and insisted that she needed to pick Nicholas up from his friend's house. She gave Teddy a ride home and let him kiss her goodnight.

That night, after Nicholas went to bed, Charlie drank straight vodka until she gathered the courage to call Sam.

"_Hello?_" he grunted.

"Hi," Charlie croaked, huddled in her bed, back pressed against the wall. Every light in the house still on and salt across every window and doorway. "I woke you up. I'm sorry."

"_S'ok_," Sam yawned. Charlie heard fabric rustling as he moved and asked, "_Are you alright?_"

No, she definitely wasn't. And she just seemed to be getting worse as the days wore on. She never wanted to leave the house, couldn't even think about returning to college without having a small panic attack. She cried all the time and saw cold black eyes everywhere she went.

"How do you do it?" Charlie wondered tearfully, hugging her half-empty bottle and hardly blinking, "How do you quit being afraid all the time?"

Sam sighed heavily and murmured, "_You don't. Not entirely. But things will get better. I promise._"

"Sam?" Charlie sniffled, whispered like someone else might be listening, "How many of 'em are out there? How many demons?"

He didn't answer.

"The ones who got me aren't really dead, are they?" Charlie continued, voicing suspicions she'd had ever since watching the Winchesters draw protective spells and symbols on hidden spots all around the house. "They could come back?"

Again, Sam didn't answer. Charlie knew it was true and hung up before she could start to cry.

In the morning, the call seemed like a blurry dream, poking its humiliating head in through momentary lulls of the hangover from hell.

She and Nicholas spent the next three days at home, playing board games and watching movies, pretending the outside world didn't exist. Well, that's what Charlie did. Nicholas mostly tried to convince her to eat and sleep, which she did not.

On the fourth day, Charlie figured she was hallucinating when she heard the throaty rumble of a Chevy engine coming up the long driveway, but a quick glance out the closed curtains confirmed that Dean's car actually was heading their way.

"Hey, guys," she greeted them warily, hiding a neon-green squirt-gun pistol of holy water behind her back, "What brings you round these parts again?"

Dean shrugged and offered a broad, charming smile as he sauntered bowlegged into the house. "We were in the area for another job," he explained, "Thought we'd check in. How's it going?"

"Going," Charlie answered. She tried to keep her eye on both brothers at once, keep her body between them and Nicholas until she could be sure that they were... well, themselves and no one else.

"Sounds exciting," Dean said, sharing a brief but charged glance with Sam as they both circled through the living room, examining the scattered Candy Land set and piles of unwashed dishes. The poorly hidden liquor bottles. He asked, "You two up for some dinner in town? Our treat."

Charlie shook her head. "I'll make you something if you're hungry," she insisted, edging toward the kitchen and dragging Nicholas with her, "C'mon, Nicky. Set the table and let Sam adn Dean relax."

The kid's protests died in his throat at just one meaningful look, and he dutifully trailed along in Charlie's wake.

She didn't fully relax until serving Sam and Dean holy-water-spiked beers and watching the brothers drink without incident. After that, she was pretty glad to see them. And dinner did turn into an enjoyable affair, followed by more drinks and a rousing game of Sorry! Charlie had a lot of fun, and Nicholas had even more. He tired himself out around midnight, and Dean volunteered to carry the sleeping boy to bed.

Sprawled beside Charlie on the floor in the living room, Sam skipped the small-talk step entirely. "Are you alright?" he asked urgently, laying his big hand on Charlie's back and frowning sadly when she shrank away from the touch.

Charlie shot him a weak smile, wrapping her arms around her knees and staring off into space. "Everything's so different now," she observed, "I never used to be scared. Of practically anything. And suddenly I can't walk down the street without flinching at least a dozen times. I wanna run, but I can't leave Nicky. I wanna stay with him, protect him, but I think all I'm doing is hurting him by acting the way I am. I don't know what to do."

Sam kneaded her shoulders and sighed, stating, "It'll get better. You just have to give yourself time to adapt, to see that just because the supernatural is out there doesn't mean your normal life has to stop."

Swallowing hard, Charlie considered the words and knew they were a lie. A pitiful fantasy, at best. "Sam," she asked quietly, "How do you kill a demon?"

His hand stopped its soothing motions, the rest of his body tensing in an instant. "No," he roared, jumping to his feet and stumbling away like he'd been hit, "Don't even think about it! You're going to get _yourself_ killed!"

Charlie stared and said nothing.

"Go back to your normal life!" Sam ordered gruffly, deep voice shaking with anger and worry, "Be thankful you still have one! Be thankful every damn day!"

"I am thankful," Charlie murmured, vaguely aware of the tears sliding down her hollow cheeks, "But I don't know how much more I can take of waiting around for something else to come kill me. I'm losing it, and I wanna be able to defend myself."

The comment seemed to appease Sam, to at least some degree. He heaved a heavy breath, brawny shoulders rolling restlessly. "Swear you won't go hunting," he demanded, "And I'll teach you a few things."

"I swear," Charlie answered without pause, doing her best to conjure a smile that always looked broken those days.

Huffing and shaking his head, Sam sunk down beside her again and muttered, "I hope you realize what you're asking for."

Charlie slid into his lap, straddled his thick thighs and pressed her lips to his.

He stopped complaining after that.

So the Winchesters stuck around another week and held private classes on basic demonology and self-defense. Being tossed around the backyard wasn't the most pleasant pastime Charlie had ever taken part in, but she had to admit that finally being able to successfully perform one of the take-down moves was exhilarating. Empowering. Shooting cans from dozens of yards off had its own distinct appeal.

And, between the lessons and Sam's presence in her bed every night, Charlie started to feel a lot better. She was sleeping again, cocooned in Sam's warm arms, and he made her eat regularly as well. To keep her strength up for the lessons, he maintained.

Charlie didn't want him to leave but knew that he would. Soon. So it really wasn't a surprise when she woke up early one morning and found herself alone in bed, found the brothers in the kitchen, in a quiet but heated discussion.

Dean saw her first, halting the argument with a bright, "Morning, Charlie."

"You guys heading out then?" the redhead challenged. She'd gotten far less patient, far less willing to entertain silly niceties and stall tactics. Who had the time?

The brothers looked at each other and then at Charlie. Sam stood, escorted her back to her room by the elbow. "We have a hunt in New York," he reported, sinking down onto her mattress, "We need to be there as soon as possible."

"Ok," Charlie said. She pushed him down onto his back and slid into bed with him, smiling at his confused expression. "But you got a little time for us to say goodbye, right?" she questioned pointedly.

Sam nodded, hands already wandering.

"I realize I must've have been a lot more high maintenance than what you're probably used to in a victim," Charlie told him, sighing happily as the man nipped at her neck, caressed her hips, "And I want you to know that I really appreciate the extra attention."

"No problem," Sam replied with a slow grin.

And then the Winchesters were gone again. In the fall, Charlie went back to college and tried to _adapt_. She started taking every kind of self-defense and martial arts class that would fit into her schedule, often spending whole days in the gym perfecting punches and kicks and throws. She turned nineteen in November, thinking about how 2007 had turned out to be a total crap-storm of a year. She changed her major from Mechanical Engineering to a double in Religion and Folklore (all her advisors said it was a waste of her considerable intellect, but they didn't know half of what she did).

She still had nightmares and called Nicholas at least twice every day to make sure he was safe at home with their clueless parents. She bought a gun and a big mean dog named Bullet. Half Rottweiler, half Doberman. She carved protection symbols into every wall and window of her apartment and often other places too: friends' houses, alleys, desks at school. Picnic tables in the park when she was supposed to be eating lunch with goofy, devoted Teddy Memphis.

She wasn't anywhere near the same person she'd been the year before, and pretending to be normal got damn exhausting.

She tried to keep her promise to Sam. She tried hard, but the world seemed so dark and threatening. And college... it was a joke now. A waste of time. She barely lasted a whole semester before withdrawing, hitting the road with Bullet riding shotgun.

From what little the Winchesters had told her about demon signs, Charlie managed to convince herself that a string of crop failures in rural West Virginia were evidence of something hinky. It was the end of June 2008, and the highways were dusty and bright and hot, wide open.

When she drove past a motel on the outskirts of the town and saw a familiar black Impala in the parking lot, Charlie was sure.

She followed Sam for days, wondering where the hell Dean was, who the hell the dark-haired girl was, surprised and pleased with herself for managing to remain unseen. She watched him send a demon back to hell with a flick of his wrist, and Charlie decided she would give _anything_ to learn that little trick.

And then Sam grabbed her from behind exiting the restroom at a gas station three counties over.

Of course, she didn't know it was him right away and nearly took off his head--literally--only nicking his neck only because of the man's extraordinary reflexes and unmatched training.

Sam wrestled her to the asphalt and knocked the knife from her hand, cursing and snarling, "God_damnit_, Charlie! It's me!"

Charlie stilled and glanced over her shoulder, smirking guiltily and laughing, "Well, hey there, sunshine. Long time no see."

Again, Sam snarled, his breath sharply metallic and about 80 proof. But he let her go, helped her to her feet. He pressed a hand to the oozing scratch on his neck and hissed, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"A girl can't take a whizz without getting the third degree?" Charlie answered. She whistled, and Bullet returned from his own potty break in the nearby field, taking his place at her side and growling menacingly. "Hush now," she told the ornery young mutt, scratching behind his floppy black ears.

"Charlie," Sam growled, "Don't do this." He looked... different. Darker. Harder. A kernel of unfathomable sadness at the heart of the ferocious shell.

Charlie smiled at him, but it was the same blank, artificial expression she used to charm gas station attendants and motel clerks. "Is that any way to greet an old friend?" she laughed, "Where's that brother of yours? I'll buy you both a drink, and we can all catch up."

Murky eyes flaring with wretched, white-hot pain, Sam shook his head and ordered, "Go home."

Charlie kept smiling. "And what?" she challenged, "Settle down? Meet Mr. Right? Get myself all barefoot and pregnant like a good girl should?"

"You _swore_," Sam hissed, completely refusing to take the bait (and where was the fun in that?), "You swore to me you wouldn't hunt!"

"I haven't," Charlie responded, finding herself getting more and more pissed off, "I'm not stupid, and I don't have a death wish." Cutting Sam off before he could continue to scold, the nineteen-year-old added, "And, while we're on the subject of who was lying to who, I'll have you know that nothing ever got better. I didn't adapt back to _normal_, no matter how hard I tried."

"And you think _chasing demons_ is the answer?!" Sam bellowed, giving his hair a frustrated tug as he paced the parking lot, "You can't even begin to understand what this life is like! It will take _everything_ from you! Every person you've ever loved is going to suffer because of your obsession! They're going to die _screaming_!! Is that worth it?!"

Charlie's bitter smirk faltered, and, again, she wondered where Dean was, kept expecting him to saunter back from the mini-mart with a cocky grin.

But he didn't.

Sam gritted his teeth and hissed, "Go. Home."

Rolling her eyes, shaking her head, Charlie turned and set off to her car. "Nice seeing you, Sam," she called lightly, "Tell Dean I said hey."

She never looked back.

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Mwahaha. Still more adventures to come. Reviews are gold ;)


	9. Armageddon

9 - Armageddon

Charlie didn't talk to the Winchesters for almost a year. Wandered aimlessly and tried like hell to keep herself together, tried to keep the crippling fear at bay. And then, in January of 2009, she started to suspect that the world was ending.

She still hadn't gathered the courage to go on a proper hunt of her own, but couldn't sit still. Couldn't pretend to be normal. And she read newspapers pretty much every chance she got, listened to the radio as she drifted around the country, caught national and international news broadcasts whenever a TV was available. In between brushing up on her demonology and religious lore and weapons and combat training, of course.

And all signs pointed to the beginning of the end of days.

Even though she knew damn well he was far less than pleased with her, Charlie called Sam. "It's the apocalypse, isn't it?" she demanded in lieu of a greeting.

Sam's startled intake of breath told the young woman everything she needed to know. She hung up and was surprised when Sam called her right back.

"_Go home, Charlie_," he pleaded, "_Be with your family_."

Smirking bitterly, she argued, "You can't just ask me to sit out the end of the world."

"_There's nothing you can do but get in the way_," Sam said, "_We're trying to stop it from even starting, and we're not going to be able to if we're worried about you stumbling into the crossfire._" And then he hung up.

Charlie thought long and hard about her next course of action. The Winchesters were clearly not going to cooperate, and she didn't know nearly enough to do anything on her own. But she had to do _something_.

She did end up going home for a little while, but not because she'd been told to. February 1st, 2009, was Nicholas's ninth birthday. He had a big party with all his little friends, and Charlie made herself sit through it even though the crowds were difficult to bear (only tolerable because of how well Charlie had warded their family's property). She put herself in charge of games and passed out anti-possession amulets as prizes, making sure every kid went home with at least one from her vast collection.

Nicholas begged her not to leave again. He even cried, and both their mother and father had long talks with Charlie, asking what the hell she was doing, why she was throwing away her life and wasting her brilliant mind.

Without a real answer, Charlie had to content herself with strengthening the demon wards around their house, forcing another few amulets onto her brother, and then hitting the road once more.

Days later and by complete chance, Charlie was offered and took a temp job in Oklahoma at a bottling plant that churned out millions of units of beverages every week. She put in long days on the line and, like clockwork, went every hour to the main intake reservoir to bless the water.

Nearly a month passed before the Winchesters showed up. They cornered her in the grocery store after her shift.

"You really have to stop following us."

Leaning into the freezer case, Charlie jumped nearly out of her skin at the sound of Sam's voice behind her. She faced the brothers and glared, holding her frozen pizza like a shield. "I'm not following you!" she insisted, "I never did! I _live_ here!" She shoved between them and beelined for the cash register, hoping futilely that they wouldn't pursue.

No such luck, of course. She whirled on them again in the parking lot, demanding, "What do you want? I'm not hunting!"

"You just happen to be living at the epicenter of an awful lot of weird shit?" Dean challenged skeptically. Still every bit the cocky SOB Charlie remembered so fondly.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," the young woman snapped. She got in her car and sped off for home.

The Winchesters parked across the street from her dinky little apartment building. They probably would've sat there all night if Charlie hadn't taken pity around one, after watching them for hours through a crack in the blinds.

With her squirt-gun pistol full of holy water, Charlie went outside, sprayed them both in the face, and then invited them in.

She knew that they lived out of flea-bag motels most of their lives, so the fact that her small, cluttered place seemed to startle them probably should've been worrisome. But Charlie ignored the judging glances and went for her fourth beer of the night, offering each of the brothers a bottle without bothering to ask.

"So," she began, flopping down onto a sofa she'd pulled from the dumpster out back (with help she subsequently regretted from her pervy downstairs neighbor), "What weird shit brought you my way this time?"

"Spontaneous exorcisms," Dean answered. He eyed Bullet suspiciously, clearly making an effort to keep far away from the intimidating dog. "All over the country," he explained, "Mostly from people who weren't displaying signs of possession. Mostly in full view of very startled witnesses."

Nodding, Sam added, "They all were drinking sodas or waters bottled during the last month at the plant in town."

Charlie grinned like a Cheshire cat, scratching behind Bullet's ears and cackling, "It worked! I can't believe it really worked!"

The brothers stared at her like she'd grown a second head. "You did this?" Sam demanded icily, "You've been spiking the bottles with holy water?"

Bullet growled at the tone of the man's voice and would not be settled by Charlie's quiet reassurances. "It worked," she defended brightly.

"You didn't do anything but piss off two dozen low-level demons!" Sam snapped, still looming but keeping his distance, "The holy water was enough to startle them out of the bodies, but nothing except for a real exorcism will send them back to hell! They've probably all gotten new hosts by now, and it's not going to take long for them to figure out what happened! They could already be lurking around here, just trying to find who's to blame!"

"Whatever," Charlie yawned. She stumbled to her feet and wandered toward her bedroom, Bullet on her heels. She told the brothers, "Make yourselves comfortable. G'night."

Charlie woke to a pounding headache and a gross, sickly sweet taste gluing the inside of her mouth shut. And she definitely wasn't in her bed.

Disorientation became panic in mere seconds, the young woman sitting up and struggling against a dizzying head rush as she did an urgent 360 survey.

She was home. Well, not completely, but maybe a mile or two away, sprawled at the side of the dirt turnoff that led to the Browning place.

"What. The. Fuck." she managed to growl, piecing together the last of her memories and coming up with just one likely cause for her current predicament: the Winchesters.

"I am gonna kill them," Charlie swore to herself, thinking that the brothers had to have drugged her or something. That was the only explanation.

She staggered to her feet, shivering in the frigid morning air. She fumbled her cell phone out of her pocket, renewing her bout of venomous curses as she turned it back on saw the date.

She'd lost two whole days.

Yup, definitely drugged. She knew Sam didn't want her messing with the supernatural, but she never thought he'd go as far as dumping her back on her own doorstep. And it was completely out of line.

Charlie dialed Sam. "Fucking bastard," she snarled, "What gives you the fucking right-"

"_Charlie_!" he cut her off sharply, "_Finally! Where've you been?!_"

That gave her some pause. "What do you mean?" she ventured carefully, getting a very, very bad feeling about the predicament, "You didn't do this? Take me home?"

"_We woke up and you were gone!_" Either Sam was a great actor or he was genuinely worried. "_We thought you might've left, but Bullet and your car are still here! And it looks like your bedroom window was broken into! Where are you?!_"

Charlie opened her mouth to tell him, once again, that she was home. But no sound came out. She couldn't... she couldn't _move_. And that very, very bad feeling turned into a just... _wrong_ feeling. Icy spiders skittering through her veins, all sinking their fangs into her at the same moment.

She suddenly found herself watching and listening to her life as if through the end of a long, dark tunnel, unable to control her body.

"Charlie can't come to the phone right now," she heard her own voice chuckle bitterly, "But leave your name, number, and preferred method of death, and she'll get back to you as soon as possible. Beep."

Sam shouted, "_CHARLIE!_"

And then Charlie hung up. Well, _Charlie_ didn't hang up, but whatever was currently piloting her meat suit certainly did. It turned off her phone and then... didn't do anything. Just stood stock still, staring up the road toward the Browning house.

Even though she was panicking quite severely, Charlie forced herself to concentrate and take stock of where she was. She realized that she was standing just outside the outermost ward of her parents' property; she realized that she was possessed. She realized that the solid weight of the many amulets she _always_ wore around her neck was gone and wondered how in the hell that had happened.

"You should be more careful of who your neighbors are," she heard her own voice mock lightly, "All the demon wards in the world won't keep the creepy guy downstairs from climbing through your window. He took such little persuading. Oh, but don't worry. I didn't let him touch you except to take off all those pesky amulets. I've got much bigger ideas in mind."

That was about the time Nicholas came walking down the drive, most likely on his way to meet the school bus.

_NO!_ Charlie shrieked, pushing with all her might against whatever had forced her to the back of her own mind, _Not Nicky! Please! I'll do anything you want! Just leave him alone!_

But Nicholas had already spotted her, crying out cheerfully and sprinting straight down the road.

There wasn't a damn thing Charlie could do to warn the kid.

Fortunately, Nicholas was smart. Sensible. And he pretty much worshipped his sister, so of course he'd taken every one of her paranoid orders and lectures to heart: he stopped short just inside the wards.

The Thing in Charlie threw her arms wide, smiling bright and laughing, "Well, c'mon, kiddo! Gimme a hug!"

Nicholas frowned thoughtfully and stood his ground. He asked, "Where's your car? Where's Bullet?"

_He's too smart to fall for your crap, demon bitch!_ Charlie crowed in delight.

Before the Thing could answer, Nicholas warily demanded, "And why are you standing out there? That's outside the ward! You said that if I can be inside the ward, then I should be!" He narrowed his dark eyes and snarled, "_Christo_!"

_That's my boy!_ Charlie cackled. It was nice to know that, whatever happened to her, she'd at least left Nicholas with the means and sense to protect himself.

She felt a sensation like her eyes catching fire and assumed from the way Nicholas gasped and stumbled backward that they had probably turned black. The Thing sneered viciously, hissing, "For a pair of ignorant nobodies, you and your sister have turned out to be a real pain in the ass."

Nicholas fumbled through his backpack and produced a squirt-gun pistol full of holy water, aiming it at the Thing and shakily ordering, "Get out of her! Go away!"

The Thing threw Charlie's head back with cruel laughter, pacing lazily, like a caged tiger, and chuckling, "Growing into some brass ones, aren't you, kiddo?"

"Leave Charlie alone!" Nicholas replied, voice getting more forceful with every syllable. Well, forceful for a nine-year-old.

"She started it," the Thing argued nastily, "Nobody gave a shit about some two-bit incubus's two-bit whore until she started screwing with our plans. And now my boss wants her D-E-A-D, _dead_." Suddenly, there was a knife in Charlie's hand, a big kitchen knife that the Thing twirled acrobatically through Charlie's slender fingers.

The Thing smirked, teasing, "What'll it be, kiddo? Am I making an example out of big sis, or can you make me a better offer?"

It was trying to trick Nicholas into a deal. _Say no, Nicky_, Charlie prayed, _For the love of god, say no!_

Nicholas let the squirt-gun gradually droop and finally hang limp at his side. He followed the Thing as it paced, murmuring, "What do you want?"

_NO! _

"Souls are always good," the Thing said with a wicked smirk, "Got one you aren't using?"

Biting his lip, hunching up his slight shoulders, Nicholas kept walking just inside the ward. His dark hair flopped into his dark eyes, and he just looked so damn young. So naïve and helpless.

_Take me! Take me, please! Not Nicky!_

"I'll even sweeten the pot," the Thing offered, stalking the boy like a predator, running Charlie's tongue slowly along her teeth, "You want your sister to come home, don't you? More than anything? Well, I want your sister to come home, too. I want her to stay there and to stop fucking around with our plans. You promise me your soul, and you can have ten _whole_ years with her. I will make sure she can't leave you during that time. You guys'll have so much fun together, just like you did before."

Nicholas swallowed hard, trembling, hugging his skinny frame and walking further along the edge of the ward as the Thing pursued, as it purred, "She's never blamed you, you know? But I can see it all up here." The Thing tapped Charlie's temple before adding, "It was your fault, kiddo. You wanted that stupid bear. You were about to blubber like a big baby when you couldn't get it, and Charlie would've let you cry. Just because you needed to learn the lesson. Needed to _toughen up_. But the carnie made fun of you, and she had to stick up for her precious baby brother. That's the only reason she won the bear and mouthed off to the carnie and got cursed in the first place. And, well, you know what happened after that..."

The Thing laughed suddenly, "Or... maybe you don't... did big sis ever tell you the whole story? What happened after she got kidnapped?"

Nicholas remained silent, shaking and letting the Thing shadow him.

_Don't listen, Nicky! Don't listen!_

"They shackled her to a pipe," the Thing narrated, almost gleeful as it strolled along in Nicholas's wake, "Naked. Bleeding. So _terrified_. They drugged her with incubus venom. Do you know what that is? It comes from a sex demon. He and his brother were going to rape her."

The Thing laughed suddenly, shaking Charlie head, "Do you even know what sex is? What rape is? Oh, you sweet, innocent little muppet. Should I explain those, too?"

"Stop," Nicholas finally insisted, whirling on the demon, swallowing hard.

Grinning, the Thing giggled, "Ready to make that deal now?"

In a completely unexpected turn of events, Nicholas smirked wickedly and countered, "Ready to go back to hell?"

"You really are too cute," the Thing mocked, lazily twirling the knife and making an abrupt about-face, trying to pace the other direction along the edge of the ward, "Like a yappy little puppy with guard-dog delusions." The Thing took about three steps and then stopped, frowning as it found itself unable to travel any further.

Charlie could feel its panic and laughed and laughed.

"Devil's Trap, bitch!" Nicholas spat, making Charlie wonder when her brother had developed the mouth. He pointed the squirt-gun at the demon and ordered, "Now get out of my sister!"

The Thing shrieked in rage, kicking at the ground and revealing a slab of painted bricks beneath a thin layer of dust. After a brief flurry of escape attempts, scratching furiously at the bricks and only managing to break most of Charlie's fingernails in the process, the Thing finally sagged, kneeling, breathing hard. It snarled menacingly as its gaze whipped back onto Nicholas.

"I was the first person the Winchesters called when Charlie disappeared," he reported, digging through his backpack, "And she's been drilling this demon stuff into my head for two years, so I've been ready for you." He produced a small tape recorder and brandished it mockingly, stating, "I had Sam read the exorcism over the phone. I could do it, but I wanted to make sure everything was pronounced right. I trip over the verbs sometimes."

"Filthy festering infant _worm_!" the Thing screeched. Charlie felt her hand tighten around the handle of the kitchen knife. "Release me," the Thing hissed, "Or you will regret ever wriggling from your slut mother's flabby cunt."

Nicholas pressed the button on the tape recorder, and... well, it didn't sound like Sam's voice that came out. But that might've been because Nicholas had turned up the speed.

Charlie never figured she'd be exorcised by one of the Chipmunks but decided to take what she could get.

Everything... everything all started happening really fast. The Thing bellowed and raised the knife but was losing coordination. Couldn't manage to get it into Charlie's heart or throat like it seemed to want, so it went for her arm. Nicholas called out, dousing the creature in holy water, which did nothing but cause further rage as it stabbed the blade into Charlie's left wrist. Charlie might not have been able to move her body, but she could certainly feel the intense pain as the knife dragged through layers of skin and arteries, tendons and muscle and bone, as the Thing managed to slit Charlie all the way up to her mid-forearm before the words of the exorcism overwhelmed the creature. The Thing twitched and writhed, screamed, and then Charlie puked up the evil mess in a burning black cloud that briefly blotted out the sun.

Nicholas was at her side in an instant, whipping off his belt and tying a tourniquet without having to be told, cinching it tight and pressing his jacket hard, painfully onto the gaping wound. He was crying, yelling at Charlie to hold on, not to leave him.

Charlie was struck very suddenly by just how much she loved her baby brother. And she wished that the last two years had never happened, that she just could've been brave enough to stay with him instead of running far and fast from summer 2007.

She smiled weakly, feeling her wasted life drain away. "Love you, Nicky," she told the boy, who was already on the phone with 911, "Love you, kid. Hey... hey." She reached for him with her free hand and only managed to smudge more of her blood onto his sweet face, which was already splattered with arterial spray. He looked too young and too old all at the same time, a baby-faced boy soldier... and it was all her fault.

Nicholas finally looked up from the injury, sobbing.

"M'sorry," Charlie slurred, tripping over her slugging tongue, "Y'did so good. An' m'sorry."

Everything went black.

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Oh nos... review, please and thanks :)


	10. The Cuckoo's Nest

10 - The Cuckoo's Nest

Waking up in the hospital after her exorcism and near-fatal knife wound, Charlie was asked to explain why she had sliced her wrist open. Thinking back later, she probably should've come up with something that sounded less crazy than _a demon made me do it_. However, since she was drugged to the gills at the time, she wasn't able to stop herself from blurting out the truth.

So being deemed an attempted suicide was really no surprise, nor was being evaluated by scores of mental health professionals in the ICU and then in the psych ward during her involuntary 72-hour hold. She really didn't think it was fair that they were allowed to interrogate her while she was under the influence of such _damn_ good medication.

By the time she was off the good stuff, she'd already spilled pretty much everything. Demons, incubi, blood-thirsty pandas. All that jazz.

Paranoid schizophrenia was the diagnosis. According to the clueless shrinks and their damn DSM-IVs, her "disease" had manifested in a pretty much textbook manner: paranoid delusions accompanied by hallucinations and perceptual disturbances, inability to maintain social connections, a pattern of erratic behavior emerging in the late-teens to early-twenties.

Charlie's parents had her committed to a picturesque facility about three hours from home.

Charlie spent every waking moment of her first two weeks there trying frantically to escape, which really didn't do anything to make her look less bonkers.

Charlie's parents wouldn't let Nicholas come see her, stating that she had traumatized her brother enough, that they didn't want him to keep buying into her delusions. That it wasn't healthy for either of them. They said not to worry, that those nice friends of her had dropped off her car and her dog and that both would be well looked after and that Charlie should just concentrate on getting better.

Antipsychotic medication was... awful. It was bad enough that she felt so damn exposed in that nut house, no protective amulets, no way to ward the building against attacks. But the pills... they made her shaky and slow, nauseas. Horribly depressed. And since she _wasn't_ psychotic, they had no upside (other than making her easier for the hospital staff to handle (with all her martial arts and self-defense training, they weren't taking any chances)).

She kept calling Sam, even though Sam wasn't answering. Days and then weeks went by, and Charlie came to the conclusion that the Winchesters were actually going to leave her there to rot. She was sane, and they knew it, but they weren't going to lift a finger to help. She'd been under the impression that they were at least sort of her friends. But apparently not. Bastards.

Her first visitor, nearly a month in, was her old friend Teddy Memphis. Charlie walked into the common area one morning, and he was just waiting there at one of the small tables. Smiling. Fucking smiling.

"Hey, Charlie-cakes," the young man greeted, bright but sheepish, just as skinny as always though a few inches taller than he was the last time they'd met. He leapt to his feet when he saw her, clumsily offering a large chocolate milkshake. With whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles and a cherry on top.

Charlie found herself returning the smile, accepting the treat and lowering her body into the chair Teddy gallantly pulled out. "Hey," she murmured, sipping hesitantly at a small slice of heaven before adding, "What're you doing here?"

"Visiting my favorite coppertop, of course," Teddy answered. His unruly curly black hair was a bit longer than Charlie remembered, grown out enough to cover his dopey ears.

And she felt really stupid for not noticing sooner, but she also saw that he wasn't wearing his glasses. "No specs?" Charlie chuckled.

"Oh," he laughed, grinning crookedly and reflexively touching the bridge of his long, slim nose, "Ya, I got contacts a while back. Took me forever to quit stabbing myself in the eye trying to put 'em in."

"Sorry I missed _that_," Charlie joked.

There was an awkward silence, but it didn't last very long at all (they never did when Teddy was around); the young man cleared his throat and dug an envelope out of his pocket, sliding it across the table and murmuring, "Nicholas wanted me to give this to you."

Charlie snatched the envelope away and tore into it in an instant, almost bursting into tears of relief when she saw the amulets enclosed inside. There was also a letter, from Nicholas of course, telling her to hold on and be safe, that he was fine and still trying to convince their parents to let her come home. He wrote that she should just stay put and try not to do anything stupid. Well, stupider.

"Charlie?" Teddy finally interrupted, laying a comforting hand over hers, "Are you alright?" He toyed idly with the edges of her bandage, probably not even aware that he was doing it.

"I'm not crazy," she insisted, voice stiff and high and tight, "I'm _not_! And I didn't try to kill myself!... you believe me, don't you?"

Teddy barely had to think before answering, smiling sadly and murmuring, "I certainly don't want to believe the alternative. And I'm all if ears, if you can convince me."

Sighing heavily, knowing that the story just made her sound even more insane, Charlie replied, "If I was capable of convincing other people, I wouldn't be in this hellhole."

"Charlie-cakes," the lanky young man prodded sweetly, "C'mon. You know I'm not _other people_."

She thought out it for a long few moments. "You got a pen?" she finally asked.

Confused, Teddy dug through his pockets and responded, "I got... uh... a marker. I'm getting an Education degree, so I help out at the elementary school most days."

Charlie grinned. Kids loved Teddy, probably because he was still practically one of them, goofy and sweet and naïve. She took the red marker out of his hand and scrawled a phone number across his palm. "Call Sam Winchester," she ordered gruffly, chewing on her bottom lip, hoping like hell the half-baked plan would work, "Don't use your real name, and don't tell him you know me. Say that you're a hunter and that you heard he and his brother dealt with cursed stuffed animal prizes a few years back. Say that you just took care of a string of them in the state, moving in pretty much a straight line toward this city."

For the first time, Teddy looked at her like she might actually be crazy, withdrawing his hand and warily inspecting the red ink.

On a second thought, on yet another strange whim, Charlie leaned across the small table, tugged down the collar of Teddy's shirt, and drew an anti-possession sigil right over the young man's heart. "Ever thought about a tattoo?" she chuckled lightly, admiring her work, "This is the one I'm getting as soon as I bust outta here."

"But Charlie," he argued worriedly, "You hate needles."

"Well," she replied, "I hate almost dying even more... mind if I keep the marker?"

The subject of Charlie's sanity pretty much dropped after that. They talked more, about nothing in particular. Normal, friendly stuff. They joked and laughed. And then Teddy left with a promise to be back for another visit as soon as he was able. Charlie couldn't really be sure that he made the call like she asked, but she was hopeful.

And when the Winchesters showed up within the week, Charlie sent up a brief prayer that went something like _God bless you, Teddy Memphis, you sweet gullible fool_.

"C'mon," Sam ordered, leaning over her cot in the middle of the night, dressed like an orderly, "Let's go."

"Nice of you to finally show up," Charlie slurred, struggling against the heavy sedation she'd been treated to after trying to put her fist through a shrink's skull. In her defense, the fucking quack had tried to stop her from finishing the Devil's Traps at the entrances and exits.

Mouth a tight, colorless, slightly angry gash in the dark space, Sam didn't say anything. He hooked his massive arms beneath Charlie's back and knees, picked her up and ran.

She slept in the back of the Impala until the drugs wore off, until it was the middle of the next day (or possibly the day after) and they were several hundred miles down the highway in the wrong direction. Charlie remembered how utterly irate she was at the brothers, remembered that she just wanted to go home.

So while they were stopped at a gas station, inside bickering over a mountain of snack foods, she borrowed a few bucks and left them a brief note, a terse _thanks for the assist_; she headed for the bus station. She bought a ticket and an unremarkable brown wig.

A few days later, she was waiting for Nicholas just inside the wards on their family's property.

He got off the bus looking gloomy. He had a busted lip and a black eye. His shirt was dirty, torn at the shoulder.

"Do I gotta break some heads over that?" Charlie inquired, falling into step beside the boy as soon as they were out of sight of the road.

The recognition took a fraction of a second. "Charlie!" the boy squealed, launching himself into his sister's arms and holding on for all he was worth, "I knew you'd come home! I knew it!"

"Of course, Nicky," she chuckled warmly, sighing with relief and wincing only slightly as the fresh tattoo just below her left collarbone stung, "I'm not going anywhere without you ever again." She held the kid at arm's length and firmly demanded, "Now, tell me about the shiner. Whose ass am I kicking?"

Pouting, Nicholas responded, "You can't! They'll send you back to that place! Besides, it was no big deal. I won the fight."

Shaking her head, looping her arm around her brother as they walked, Charlie chuckled, "That's what winning looks like? Christ, kid, we gotta work on your defense."

Nicholas scowled, insisting, "There were three of them! Eighth graders! They were talking bad about you!"

"Three eighth graders against one little Nicky?" Charlie marveled, "Way to go, pint-size. The school call Mom and Dad?"

Nicholas shook his head, dark fringe flying in and out of his dark eyes. "It was behind the dumpsters before the bus showed up. They were such wimps. Jared Young even _cried_."

Charlie smiled.

She hid out at home for awhile, avoiding her parents and everyone else. She slept during the mornings, snug in bed until it was time to meet Nicky at the end of the driveway. Then they had all afternoon together, until just before their parents got home, at which point Charlie would leave to prowl around the property with Bullet, inspecting the wards until night fell, until the sleepy town went silent and Charlie was free to roam and put more wards up everywhere. Nicholas's school was the first priority, but from there she progressed to the hospital, grocery store, library, post office, and city hall. Then along the edge of the city limits in an unbroken circle. Miles of hiking and gallons of spray paint. When the sky began to lighten, Charlie would go home, hover near the back of the house until her parents left for work and Nicky let her back in. They would have breakfast together, and she'd watch him board his bus before returning to crash in her own cozy bed.

Time passed in that fashion. The routine was sort of comforting, but it also made Charlie a bit anxious; she was having a hard time staying put, even though she knew that she had to for Nicholas. Still, she couldn't help sensing the apocalypse looming. Couldn't help being terrified of what would happen next, feeling like she should be doing something _more_. She must've picked up her phone a hundred times, scrolled to Sam's name in the contacts and let her finger linger on the call button before chickening out. She didn't know what she would've said to him anyways.

She heard about Maryland on the news. The weird lights. The demolished church. It seemed so... random. But Charlie still got a bad feeling about the whole thing. She'd learned to trust her bad feelings. She started stockpiling weapons and other assorted supplies, digging underground bunkers in the woods. Doing everything short of prostitution and murder to finance the project.

Not too much later, in the middle of the night, Sam called. He didn't say anything at first, just breathed wetly into the speaker.

Charlie waited, patiently.

Finally, he croaked, "_It's my fault. It's all my fault_."

"You didn't stop it," Charlie stoically observed. She gave her can of spray paint another few shakes and added another few strokes to the sigil she was drawing on the underside of the bridge at the north end of town.

Sam gave a drunken, humorless chuckle. "_I started it_," he confessed. A slosh and gulp echoed over the line before the hunter added, "_The planet is doomed, and it's my fault_."

"On the upside," Charlie pointed out, "I got enough supplies and gear to last through 2020, and my town's practically a fortress. You know, in case you're ever in need of one."

With another chuckle, another slosh and gulp, Sam inquired, "_Am I that pitiful?_"

Charlie argued, "I just don't want you doing anything stupid. Well, stupider."

"_You're still mad at me_," the man observed. It sounded like he might've been pouting.

"Damn straight," Charlie countered, "You were gonna leave me stranded in the whack shack, you asshole. I had to get Teddy to fake a hunt just to get your attention."

In the brief silence, Charlie knew Sam was gaping. "_That was_-" he said, "_You- I can't believe you did that! We really thought you were in danger! We only stopped looking because Nicholas said you'd turned up at home!_"

Laughing, Charlie observed, "I figured. Don't worry. You're still my white knight even though the threat wasn't real."

Again, Sam didn't say anything for a few long moments. Then, he grumbled, "_You're gonna drive _me_ nuts_." He sighed heavily before adding, "_I just... I just didn't want you getting hurt again._ _You were supposed to be safe there._"

"And you're supposed to be my friend," Charlie murmured, "Locking me up somewhere, with no defenses, is not how you keep me safe. Hell, you should've just posted a billboard for a demonic buffet." Before Sam could argue, Charlie cut in, "If you really want to protect me, help me learn how to hunt."

"_No_."

Growling impatiently, Charlie declared, "The world is ending. Do you really want me _not_ to know what to do when the shit really hits the fan?"

Sam heaved another drunken sigh, took a few more gulps. "_I have a friend_," he slurred, "_A hunter. One of the best. He just... he was paralyzed. His legs... but he's going home soon, and he'll need someone to help him out for awhile_."

With a triumphant grin, the young woman replied, "Just call me Nurse Charlie."

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Yet another thrilling chapter, lol. As always, reviews are hot monkey love ;)


	11. What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Part 11 - What I Did on My Summer Vacation

In hindsight, kidnapping Nicholas probably wasn't the smartest move.

But it wasn't like Charlie could've left him again, even if she'd wanted to. She'd promised the kid, and their parents were nice but never quite the hands-on type; they couldn't be trusted to protect him the way he needed to be. Besides, they still thought she was insane, and _me and Nicholas are taking the summer to learn to hunt demons, ghosts, and other spooky things you don't believe in. See ya!_ wouldn't have gone over very well at all.

On the last day of school, Charlie packed her car with guns and ammo and amulets and enough snacks to get them to South Dakota. She loaded Bullet into the backseat (he wasn't happy about having to give up shotgun to Nicky, but he liked the boy and would have to deal; seniority and all) and took her Firebird out for the first time since early-March. The engine turned over with a throaty roar, and Charlie briefly let herself forget that the apocalypse was on its way, pulled down the driveway and let the summer wind rush through her long hair and over her pale skin.

It felt, tasted, smelled like _freedom_. Like everything she'd been missing and craving without even realizing.

She idled around the corner from Nicholas's school, waiting to hear the bell ring so that she could swoop in and collect her brother, beat a hasty retreat out of town.

But her recon was a little screwed because she just happened to be parked on the path of Teddy Memphis's afternoon jog. He nearly tripped over himself when he saw her, sprinting over and hammering on the window until Charlie grudgingly unlocked the door. Teddy threw himself down into the passenger seat, panting and dripping.

"Yo! Sweatasaurus!" Charlie crowed, "Watch the leather!" She dug around the backseat for a towel and chucked it into Teddy's startled face.

The young man frowned at her. "How was suckering me into helping your breakout supposed to prove that demons are real?" he demanded crossly.

Offering a vaguely guilty smile, Charlie countered, "Ted, it's not the kinda thing you just _believe_. You see it with your own eyes, and it changes _everything_."

He continued to frown, smoothing his slick black curls off his flush forehead. With a huff, he argued, "Could've told me that instead of having me aid and abet you."

"I wasn't in _jail_," Charlie snapped, "It was an involuntary commitment. Besides, even if I am caught, which I won't be, it's not like I'm gonna give you up. All you did was make a phone call. And thanks for that, by the way."

"Whatever," Teddy pouted. They glared at each other for a few long, uncomfortable moments before he added, "What're you doing here?"

Charlie grinned and announced, "Nicholas and I are going on a trip this summer."

"Uh huh," Teddy muttered, clearly skeptical, "And do your parents know about this trip?"

Shrugging, Charlie declared, "I left them a note." After a brief silence, she snapped, "Don't look at me like that. I'll have him back before school starts. Worst case scenario, I'll get nabbed and plead to custodial interference, hide behind diminished capacity, and tolerate another few months of antipsychotics."

(She had the kind of absurd thought that Sam would be proud of her legal plot.)

"Charlie," the slim young man sighed.

But before he could go on, she interrupted, "Wanna see my tattoo?" She pulled down the hem of her t-shirt, farther than necessary to flash the ink just below her left collarbone.

It was almost too easy, Teddy's eyes going wide as he unconsciously leaned in, mesmerized by the slice of pale flesh. Charlie knocked him out with one swift punch, wincing and regretting that the action was necessary.

She dragged her friend out of the car and into some nearby bushes, left a quick note stuck in his hand; it said _Sorry, Teddy. Ice your jaw, and I'll make it up to you someday. Take care of yourself. Love, Charlie. _In the course of checking his strong pulse, the young woman saw that Teddy had a tattoo of his own, that he'd inked over the protection sigil she'd drawn on his chest. She couldn't help smiling, a little sadly, as she piled back into the car and zipped off to get Nicholas from school.

Their actual escape from town was a lot less eventful. Nicholas hopped into the passenger seat, and then they were gone, speeding past the city limits before anyone was the wiser.

The Amber Alert for Nicholas took a ridiculously long time to be posted; if her brother had been kidnapped by someone other than herself, Charlie would've been extremely upset by the lack of response. She was already over the state border before the report came over the radio. There was a description of Nicholas, Charlie, and Charlie's car, as well as the fact of Charlie's supposed mental illness. Beautiful.

But the trip was relatively easy, considering. They were careful, stuck to back roads and took their time, pulled into South Dakota two days later and made Singer Salvage just before nightfall.

Charlie hadn't been entirely sure what to expect from Bobby Singer. Sam had briefed her on the overall situation but hadn't provided more than the basics: Bobby was a hunter; Bobby owned a salvage yard; Bobby was a recently minted paraplegic; Bobby knew demons. Bobby had agreed to teach her to hunt.

"Charlie and Nicholas?" he asked gruffly, already waiting on his rickety porch as they approached.

"Yes, sir," Charlie replied, taking in his scruffy beard and thin flannels and faded cap. The scuffs on his boots, wear and creases from all the walking he did back when he still could.

_Probably the last pair of boots he'll ever need to buy_, Charlie noted bitterly.

She didn't know Bobby yet, but she still hated seeing him in that wheelchair. Hated the cold fury in his guarded expression, the panic. Charlie was no mind-reader, but Bobby's thoughts practically vibrated out of him. _No, no, no, no, no_, Charlie imagined him chanting, _This isn't happening. This can't be happening. Wake up. Please, God, let me wake up_.

"Well," Bobby rumbled, "C'mon in." He struggled briefly with getting himself and his chair pointed in the proper direction, and then Charlie and her brother were following the hunter into his cluttered home.

Again, Charlie didn't know what she'd been expecting but wasn't at all surprised to walk into what looked like a rare bookstore run by a superstitious hoarder with a pathological aversion to cleaning supplies.

The kitchen was a bit better, mostly uncluttered and reasonably tidy. Bobby navigated to the fridge, produced two beers and an apple juice. He visibly relaxed as Charlie and Nicholas graciously drank.

The young woman realized that they'd probably been dosed with holy water and grinned into her bottle, deciding that she and Bobby were going to get along famously.

He said he wouldn't teach her about demons, at least not right away. Demons were the nuclear physics of evil shit, and Charlie was going to have to work her up from basic arithmetic if she wanted any hope of being a proper, competent, actually-live-through-the-hunts hunter.

That's not to say that Bobby wasn't extremely impressed with Nicholas and his one exorcism. Not even the Winchester boys were performing exorcisms at age nine. "But don't think you'll be doin it again anytime soon," the old man added gruffly. He watched closely as Nicholas's small hands mechanically disassembled a sleek Glock.

Standing at the stove, stirring a pot of spaghetti sauce, Charlie couldn't help glowing with pride and resolutely agreeing, "Damn right. No more underage exorcisms for you, kiddo."

Nicholas pouted, fumbling just a little with the firing pin as he argued, "Saved your butt."

"Ya, well," Charlie muttered absently, "The pressing need to save it again will be the only exception to the rule."

"But I still get to learn all the stuff, right?" the dark-haired boy demanded, glancing expectantly between his sister and the grizzled junk merchant, "Ghosts and werewolves and all the rest?"

Though Bobby obviously wasn't too pleased, he answered, "I reckon so."

It became clear within the first few days in South Dakota that Charlie's role at the salvage yard wasn't limited to nursemaid or student of the supernatural. She herself found doing all the cooking, the cleaning (which it seemed like no one had attempted since practically before she was born), and even taking over the more physical elements of the legitimate business side of Bobby's operation (tows and oil changes and alignments and part sales and such).

And, not that the redhead really minded, but heap all that on top of training, researching, entertaining Nicholas, and installing wheelchair ramps and other disabled-person goodies around the house and in the vehicles (as well as dealing with the snarling gimp himself, who was not as cuddly as Charlie had hoped), and the sheer quantity of responsibilities got exhausting. Besides, the Art of the Full Night's Sleep had been pretty elusive since Charlie's very first run-in with the Things That Go Bump; she considered herself lucky with three hours before nightmares or just plain hyper-vigilance had her bolting back into consciousness.

So when the Winchester brothers showed up about a month in, she was so happy for a reprieve of being the Able-Bodied Adult in Residence that she completely forgot to be pissed at them for ditching her in a mental hospital.

Of course, that may have also had something to do with the fact that Sam found her passed out underneath a car.

She hadn't meant to doze off, but it was shady under there, a cool, dark oasis in the midst of the blistering noon heat. And the dolly was as good a horizontal surface as any. One minute, she was wrestling with and cursing at a stripped bolt, and the next she was blinking up at Sam Winchester's artfully back-lit concerned-puppy expression.

"You alright?" he asked instantly, squatting at her side as his huge hands busied themselves with taking the girl's temperature and pulse.

Charlie yawned, still tired and more than a little fuzzy. "M'fine," she insisted, sitting up and rubbing at her eyes with a hopefully clean patch of wrist, "Guess I just dozed off."

Sam frowned, continuing his insistent pawing and fretting.

"Really," the young woman declared, shoving him off with a soft laugh, "Haven't you ever heard of a _siesta_?"

Shaking his head but at least finally sharing the chuckle, Sam swept his own floppy hair away from his eyes and murmured, "How you been, Charlie?"

She grinned. "Can't complain. Yourself?"

"Same old, same old," he reported with a dark smirk, "Unfortunately."

Another yawn and a spine-popping stretch, and Charlie inquired, "World still ending then?"

"Ya."

"Good to know."

Sam seemed hesitantly bemused and offered a hand up, which Charlie accepted happily. Upright, she stumbled against his chest, laughing, "Whooh. Head rush." She made no move to step out of the older man's steadying embrace, and he made no move to release her. If anything, his grip tightened as the almost-uncomfortable seconds ticked by.

"CHARLIE!" Nicholas screamed from somewhere out of sight.

With a sigh, Charlie answered, "WHAT, NICKY?"

"CAN I GO TO THE STORE WITH DEAN?"

"WEAR A HAT!"

"THANKS! WE'LL BE BACK IN A FEW HOURS!"

"OK! BE CAREFUL!"

She felt Sam's rumbling laugh, his hands flexing at her waist. "You know they're gonna be gone all day, right?" he pointed out.

"I'd be surprised if they weren't," Charlie replied with a sideways smile, "Nicky's been going stir-crazy, but I don't want him getting recognized."

Shaking his head, commented, "Ya, we heard the Amber Alert go out from four states over. Nicholas Matthew Browning, nine-years-old, believed to be travelling in the company of his mentally ill sister, Charlotte Miriam Browning, twenty."

"Ugh," Charlie complained, finally stepping out of the embrace, "Don't remind me! Having my full name broadcast over the radio was_ not_ what I had in mind when I hatched this brilliant plan."

They wandered inside, and Bobby promptly banished them again, claiming he wanted some damn peace and quiet while he worked.

"Like me and Nicky are a herd of elephants," Charlie grumbled, walking aimlessly, deep through the labyrinth of scrap metal, "We pretty much just stay quiet and outta the way until he calls us over for some kinda lesson or errand." She chucked a ball and giggled as Bullet tore off after it.

Kicking at the scorched earth, Sam commented, "He's not used to sitting anything out. I can tell he really hates not being more active, but it's not like he's useless. Bobby's the first call for every hunter worth his salt."

"I finally get that joke," Charlie proclaimed, laughing, "You know, _worth his salt_. Takes on a whole new meaning now that my pockets actually _are _filled with salt."

"I never thought of it that way," Sam chuckled. He kept stealing sly sideways glances her way, cheeks and forehead flushing in the sun. But he made no move to get within an arm's length of her (one of his arm's lengths, which was significantly longer than one of Charlie's).

They walked and walked, not really saying anything but keeping each other company. Gradually, the junkers thinned out and opened up on a barbed-wire-topped metal fence that marked the end of Bobby's property, separated it from the sparse woodland beyond.

Charlie sent Bullet back to the house, told him to keep Bobby company, and then wasted no time shimmying over the barrier.

Sam was right behind her. "I haven't been out this far since I was a little kid," he commented wistfully, dropping effortlessly, "Is that old pond still around? It was only a couple miles from here."

"Dunno," Charlie answered, seizing his hand and tugging hard, "But it's hot as fuck, so I say we check that out."

The old pond was still around, still shady and cool at the bottom of a shallow ravine, fed by a picturesque little waterfall.

Grinning brilliantly, Charlie moaned, "_Yes_." She stripped her shoes and shorts and shirt and was in the water before she even had time to realize that Sam wasn't following.

"What gives, slow poke?" the young woman teased, floating happily on her back, "Jump in."

Sam shuffled on the bank, didn't glance her way but declared, "I, uh, I don't think so."

"C'mon," Charlie goaded, splashing futilely in his general direction, "This was your idea... and I promise not to make fun of your Underoos."

"Um," he began sheepishly, "Well, that would be nice, if I were wearing... anything... we haven't done laundry in awhile, and I sorta forgot..."

Cackling brightly, Charlie teased, "Alright, Captain Commando, then I promise not to take advantage of you."

No answer.

"Live a little!" she taunted. After a second's thought, she ducked underwater and removed her bra and panties, whipping them at Sam's face as she surfaced. "There," Charlie declared, lazily treading water, "We're even. Now quit being a big baby and get in here, before you end up with heat stroke."

Sam seemed anxious but intrigued, rocking from foot to foot before finally peeling off his sweaty t-shirt.

"Slower," Charlie instructed, biting her bottom lip and thoroughly enjoying the show.

Still reluctant, sculpted chest glistening almost mythically, Sam let his hands linger on his zipper, easing down the teeth, toeing off his shoes before finally sliding his jeans over his hips and down his muscular thighs.

Charlie couldn't help letting out a saucy whistle as the hunter gave a hesitant smirk and finally strode into the water, naked as the day he was born.

They swam and talked, splashed a little, but nothing else. Hot Winchester ass aside, Charlie didn't have sex in random ponds. No way would that be sanitary.

But still, it was a really nice afternoon. Relaxing, for both her and Sam. He quickly got over his unnecessary shyness and even joined her for an hour or so of slothful sunbathing on a large, flat boulder at the water's edge. Once dry, they dressed in silence and set off back for the salvage yard.

That night, after Nicholas had gone to bed (crashed really, thanks to an afternoon of caffeine and sugar), Dean grinned into the mouth of his beer and declared, "So... I noticed that you two are looking all deliciously brown... but where're the tan lines?"

Charlie used her best, most girly, flirty giggle, drew her fingertips lightly along the back of Dean's neck as she went for another beer. "I've never been fond of those," she teased, sultry and sweet as she bent over and leaned into the fridge, let herself linger in the chill. Standing again and catching both hunters staring openly at her backside, Charlie added, "And your brother seems like a pleased convert." She smirked and winked and sauntered out onto the porch.

"Dude," she heard Dean groan as soon as he thought she was out of earshot, "That girl is _ridiculously_ hot. If you don't go after her, I think I might have to."

"Hey," Sam said when he arrived very shortly on the porch.

Charlie gulped her beer and laughed, "Hey."

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Sorry for the long delay. My muses can be fickle, but hopefully you enjoyed this installment and won't have to wait too long for the next one. Reviews, as always, are highly encouraged and greatly appreciated :)


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